A.D. Drumm Images, LLC – Landscape, Portrait, and Fine Art Photography in Rochester MN Photography

Last night I shot show photos for Rochester Civic Theatre’s production of Shadowlands. This tells the story of a middle-aged C.S. Lewis finding love rather unexpectedly. It’s a rather emotional story, and knowing a little about the plot, I was surprised at the humor that finds its way into much of the story.

It’s always interesting to me the choice of color of the lighting and costumes. Those colors can set the mood for the show. Here, there were rather muted colors, lots of browns and dark shades, and there was an overall magenta cast to the lights.

I think the most colorful costumes were those worn by Joy, Lewis’ love interest. It isn’t too hard to understand why, as she brings some color into Lewis’ life.

A golden tree hides in the shadows at the back of the set, lighting up rather unexpectedly during the show. It serves as something of a gateway to other worlds including those of Lewis’ books such as Narnia.

In terms of the photo shoot, actors tended to be more or less together in areas of the large set. That made my job a bit easier. I often have to find some way to include either a large cast (think about big musical numbers) or cast members at the far corners of the stage interacting. Here I had less of that, and I was able to zoom in more and get in close to the players. That’s always nice.

The more challenging aspect of this show was probably the lighting. None of the scenes were brightly lit. Often, there was one or a set of bright lights with an otherwise muted background. This is similar how spotlights affect the shot – lots of contrast. There were a few shots with very low lighting, but I’m able to reasonably deal with that.

After I returned home, I started to wonder how many shows I’ve shot. This show makes 65. I’m beginning to figure it out, I think!

Rochester Civic Theatre’s latest production was The Neverending Story. The cast was mostly young people, but there were a few adult actors including Lynne. The story is the same, at a high level, as in the 1980s film of the same name, but it’s actually more complex and more interesting.

There were lots of colorful costumes and a pretty terrific set. It was a fairly technical production including a few flying scenes. With all that, the young actors conquered the challenges.

From a photography point of view, the big challenge was the lighting as it was often pretty dark. There were also a few scenes with spotlights which add to the contrast. If you only want to capture the main subject – the one standing in the spot – it’s fine. In fact, it can be great because it’s plenty bright. But often, you also want to show other characters on stage to some degree, and that can be tough.

Here, there was The Nothing which was represented by, well, I’m not sure what it was. It involved actors inside a flexible black fabric that could move and undulate. I’m not sure I did it complete justice although I have a few shots that show it a bit better. But along with spots, it wanted to just disappear. Maybe that’s okay – it was The Nothing!

Other scenes were simpler to capture using my normal camera settings for shows. I’ve been shooting so many, that I have dedicated one of the three custom setups on the 5DMkIII to theatre. I just select C1, and I’m ready to start shooting. I do still have to adjust exposure from there, but it starts me close to where I need to be, and ISO and other settings are ready to go.

My favorite scenes to shoot were those with the turtle, Morla. It was a fun set piece, the head thrusts out of the body before the audience realizes what it is. Then, the lighting is this mix of green and blue and looked great. It was very dark, though, but the color of the gels ends up nice and saturated. It’s one of the joys of digital: when I made my first image and checked the LCD, I could see already how great it looked. It’s sort of “a moment” for a photographer, knowing you have captured something special. Makes me smile.

Sadly, the show ran only two weekends, although they had Saturday matinees and a weekday show for local school children. Many of the young actors were making their main stage debut at RCT, and they did great. Watch RCT in the next month or so as they have some special events and performances dedicated to diversity in what’s become a yearly tradition.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a couple other shoots recently I may try to blog about. But for now, I need to get back to editing! Have a great, and creative, 2013!

I remember attending the movie Charly as a kid. When I’ve heard the basic plot line of Flowers for Algernon, I thought it was very similar to what I remembered of the movie. Indeed, I found, the movie was based on the same story.

I was pleased to see the Rochester Civic Theatre production of the story. Denise’s set design was interesting, covered everywhere by the lines and angles of a maze. In shades of grey, it made the colors of the costumes stand out.

The set of mazes is rather busy as a backdrop for photos. That’s something our brains handle better in person than in the 2D photographic images. Staying tight and using depth-of-field helps.

We can also use angles to our advantage and allow the lines of the set form leading lines for a composition.

Lynne played a role, too, by using her sewing talents to create Algernon, the lab mouse named in the title. The little guy looked pretty realistic on stage and respectable even in the photos.

The story of Charlie, being thrust from his happy, but intelligence-challenged life into that of a genius whose intelligence left his emotional and social side far behind, is a thought-provoking one.  To me, it parallels the state of humankind in this great scientific and technical age, where we have learned so much yet cannot let go of war and greed.

Our human brains are truly incredible, allowing us to produce great art – visual, musical, performance – and understand much of the universe around us. Yet, we still maintain our animal past. Perhaps the former will win over the latter. We can hope.

Meanwhile, we think and study and consider our being. An evening attending a play written many years ago but still containing very current themes, is a pretty good way to help us along our journey.

Last night, Rochester Civic Theatre held their annual fundraiser, Encore, at the theatre. Seemed like a good turn-out to me. There was good food – really good food – and a cash bar to begin the evening. This being a theatre, you know there’s going to be entertainment, mainly provided by the cast of the current show, The Marvelous Wonderettes.

They were awesome, just like on opening night the evening before. I had my trusty camera with me and grabbed some shots during dinner and during other parts of the program, including our mayor coming on stage wearing a Harley Davidson leather jacket!

But I thought I’d show off some of the shots of the Wonderettes cast here – sort of a preview of the show photos.

Probably the most noticeable feature is the bright colors. Of course, the girls have the requisite hair colors, blond, red, and two shades of brunette. But the dresses are what grab your eyes.

The songs are late fifties and sixties, mainly of the style employing a lead singer and a group of back-ups. So, we had some strong spot lights with a bit more subdued lighting behind.

This sometimes adds a lot of contrast to the shots, but it actually works fine since the focus is really on the gal up front, and the lighting draws you there. That’s the intention of the lighting, of course, for the actual live performance.

For a fundraiser like this, consider that the actors, the band, the two folks running the spots, and the woman running the mic levels are all volunteers. So are the group of young actors who manned the red carpet in front of the theatre as the paparazzi. I’m sure there were others. This is something very special about the arts, and particularly the performing arts. This theatre is a place they need to be there for them.

It was a fun evening. Lynne and I were there until they were literally rolling up the carpet. Hanging with friends, enjoying their company, and glad we have a civic theatre of this caliber here in Rochester.