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

September 3, 2012

The Marvelous Wonderettes promo shots

Filed under: Rochester,Rochester Civic Theatre — Tony Drumm @ 9:47 am

The first show of the new season at Rochester Civic Theatre opens this Friday, The Marvelous Wonderettes. Greg had the idea for the promo shots to drive around Rochester and shoot the four actors with various Rochester landmarks. Of course, the first one to come to mind is the corn cob water tower!

For those of you who aren’t or haven’t been in the Rochester area, Rochester, MN is in the upper Midwest of the USA, part of what is often called the bread basket. So, yes, there’s plenty of corn in these parts. And, judging from the smell and the truck we passed filled with cobs, it’s sweet corn harvesting season!

I loved this shot and the energy they showed!

Rochester is also a year-round home to giant Canadian geese. Silver Lake, downtown, is a favorite site for the geese. We all walked out onto the grass – carefully.

The Mayo brothers’ put Rochester on the map. Their statue stands in front of the Mayo Civic Center, and it was another obvious choice. The evening sun provided some nice warm tones for the photo.

There are several large painted geese around downtown. This one sits (or stands?) in front of the offices of the Rochester Honkers baseball team. It’s just across the street from the theatre.

We wanted to use one of the Rochester welcome signs. I know of two – one north of town on US 52 and one south of town on US 63. I scoped out both ahead of the shoot. The north one is actually near a frontage road which could have made it easy to get to – except for the fence in between. US 52 is a freeway there, so stopping along the road isn’t really a good idea and likely illegal.

The sign on 63 isn’t a lot better. The highway speed limit is 65 mph in that section, but there are at-grade intersections, so it’s not a freeway. We parked well off the roadway, and Greg led the young women through the weeds to the grassy area in front of the sign. I stood on the shoulder with my 70-200 lens maxed out to 200 mm. Trucks driving by honked their horns as the ladies climbed up the hill. We had some decent evening light and the great bright colors of the dresses.

We ended back at the theatre for their rehearsal and grabbed a shot in front of the marquee. It’s hard to believe it’s September, today is Labor Day, and Wonderettes opens the new season this Friday. What the heck happened to summer?

While we were out shooting the corn cob water tower, I moved in for a closer shot of the players. Sounds like the show should be fun with lots of old favorite tunes.

We’ll be there Friday. Hope to see you, too!

 

March 10, 2012

Working on Posters

Filed under: Rochester,Rochester Civic Theatre — Tony Drumm @ 7:04 pm

It’s that time of year again when I’m working hard on the posters for Rochester Civic Theatre’s new season. I have the good fortune to learn about the new season well ahead of the general public. The next season will be formally announced on opening night for Chicago, the spring musical this year.

The way the process works is Greg draws up some small sketches for his vision of the posters. We meet, Greg shows me the sketches, and we talk about how they might actually be executed. Usually, the final poster is very much an embodiment of his original vision. My job is to execute that vision using photographs and other design elements. Sometimes, we change the direction as we talk over the design.

Next, with lots of help, we line up folks to serve as our models, find props and costumes appropriate to the design, and have a photo shoot for me to capture the images that will form the basis for the posters. We’ve done pretty well in recent years in capturing most of the needed shots in one session.

Assembling the posters is more of a graphic design exercise than a photographic one. I reach way back to some of the art skills I learned as a kid from a local artist. I try to absorb bits and pieces of graphic design from designers I know from NAPP and from Greg who is rather skilled at it himself. I use Photoshop techniques I glean from folks like Corey Barker, folks in a whole different league. It’s a stretch always, but I always learn something new and produce posters that I can be proud of. In the end, I hope they convey the themes for the shows and help get the message out to the community about the terrific shows at RCT.

This year, we managed to schedule the photo shoot enough ahead of the deadline, that I feel I have some breathing room – I’m not scrambling to complete the artwork in time to send to the printers. Thank you, Denise, for making that happen! It helps that the musical opens in April rather than March. I think the posters are progressing nicely. As usual, I have a favorite, but I’m pretty pleased with all of them.

Planning the photo shoot is fun. I often have an opportunity to do some interesting lighting effects. We had one in particular that was fun to set up and it worked just like I pictured in my head. Can’t get much better than that. I’ll have a post after the lid is off the new season and can show the posters, and I’ll talk about that lighting effect then.

Meanwhile, I was looking through my set of photos for a few I could add to this post without giving anything away. I’m pretty sure these shots meet that criterion! Greg filled in for some models for me to check my lighting, and Ben gave me a nice profile shot. Most of the time, the posters involve some compositing, so I don’t worry about little things like lights in the frame as long as my subjects have the lighting I need. And sometimes, my subject is less animate letting me shoot it at my leisure, even sometimes in my office here where my nice neutral grey walls create a terrific background.

Making progress, and only a bit over a month to wait until I can show you the new posters! Can’t wait.

December 23, 2011

Basketball Shoot

Filed under: General photography,Rochester,Sports — Tony Drumm @ 4:59 pm

Jeff, my friend and neighbor, enjoys doing Photoshop editing and creating interesting projects. Last year, he did a cool poster for his daughter’s basketball team, and he asked me to help out by shooting some full-length portraits to be included in the poster (see this post). A year later, he has a new poster idea. He once again contacted me about doing the photography for him. The concept included a team photo and several action shots.

The team photo would be shot in the gymnasium some time when we could gain access to it. He mentioned perhaps we’d try to do some action shots then, too. But also, if I could shoot a game, there’s be some photos of the girls in action there.

The opportunity for shooting at a game happened first. I don’t do a lot of sports shooting. Certainly, my gear is more centered on portrait and landscape photography. Specifically, the Canon 5D MkII, while being a wonderful camera, is not the first choice for a sports shooter. It’s focusing is a bit old-ish technologically compared to some of its peers, and it’s frame rate, while decent, won’t win any contests. Still, it has good ISO performance in low light, and its 21 megapixels makes up for some shortcomings.

But it was certainly fun shooting the game. Someone told me to watch the refs who will invariably stand between you and the shot. It turned out to be quite true. Especially for free throws, when I’d set up the perfect angle and composition, the girl would dribble a couple times, then the ref would ease into my frame. Arg!

Jeff and family and friends were into the game. He later told me he forgot I was there. As a photographer at an event, you always wonder about this. At a wedding, I don’t want to be what the attendees see and remember. Same thing for other events – you want to try to be there but unnoticed.

On Sunday, we were able to use the gym. I was looking forward to this shoot. This time, I’d be able to use lights to construct the shots. I brought three Speedlites – one on the camera as a master and two slaves. The master was set to not fire during the exposure – it was there only to control the other two. The team shot was first. Using a couple umbrellas, this gave me some remarkably even lighting. Jeff was great in arranging the girls to match his vision and the girls did really well as I clicked off a couple dozen or more shots.

But I was most excited about what we might get for action shots. I had the lighting and a particular look in mind. It took a few minutes to find the right setup for the lights – still using two strobes. But once that was nailed, things went pretty smoothly.

The baskets were raised and we were losing the gym to another group, so we couldn’t spend much time exploring various types of shot. But we were able to catch each girl in some action. I really enjoy using lights like this. It adds drama to the shot, and when it’s combined with a cool move, the result can be terrific.

I think I have some good shots for Jeff to use. I took the resulting images and applied some effects in post to give them the look I had in mind when I shot them. This was my favorite shot as it really hit the mark I wanted. She’s in a great position and her flying hair adds to the motion and action of the photo.

I’ve never been a big fan of basketball, but put a camera in my hands and, better yet, give me the freedom to put up some lights, and I’m loving it!

December 4, 2011

First Real Snow of the Season

Filed under: Beautiful Earth,General photography,Rochester — Tony Drumm @ 5:21 pm

I love the look of fresh snow, especially the kind that builds up on the trees, fluffy and white. We had our first real snowfall of the season yesterday – several inches. It was a wet, heavy snow. Here in Minnesota, we see a lot more of the light, dry snow with our typical cold temps. But, it’s been fairly mild so far.

Luckily, there was practically no wind today. The snow covering the trees was still there pretty much all day. I told Lynne I might go out and try to grab some shots. I was thinking driving out to the countryside and looking for some cool image. My car does okay in the winter with its winter tires, but it’s not the sort of car you go wandering about looking for some out-of-the-way location.

When I look over my big collection of photographs, winter and snow shots tend to be few. I do like the look, the way it blankets the landscape. But I really don’t like cold. I figure it’s my Mediterranean blood.

Still, I can’t deny how terrific snow photos can be. I still remember some I shot after a big snowfall back in NY when I was shooting slides. Some of those were pretty darn good, if I do say so. Lots of big fluffy, heavy snow back there.

Lynne thought I was talking about walking out back and taking some shots of our trees. Hm. Why did I immediately think about going out driving and hunting for a shot when the backyard looks so great?

I pulled out the camera and thought a moment about lenses. It might be cool to shoot some close-in photos. Focus on the snow and some other natural element. And, it could be useful to shoot wide-open and avoid having any nearby houses or other distractions in the shot. So, I grabbed my 135 f/2 lens.

I dialed in the aperture to f/2 and set about shooting. The obvious starting point is our crabapple with its load of fruit waiting for birds to clear it, usually in late winter. The red crabapples look great with the white of the fresh snow. And it’s one of my favorite color combinations – red and white.

Then I started looking around for other interesting subjects. Couldn’t miss Coco, our neighbor’s dog. He doesn’t like to stand still so focusing with such a shallow depth of field is a challenge, but I started seeing this peaking-out view of him and managed to grab a nice photo with sharp eyes. Or, I guess, sharp eye.

The grapes still hanging from the vines on our fence and the apples in the neighbor’s tree caught my eye. You might imagine how the grapes look in December, so I was thinking black and white when I shot them. The apples are looking a bit worse for the wear, too, but their color was just too wonderful to leave out.

I thought the snow on the gate was interesting with the patterns and gray background. Another good subject for B/W treatment. Of course, it was already nearly black and white to begin with.

Sometimes you do need to just look around you. Even living in the city with a small yard, there can be some cool photographs waiting for you.

November 5, 2011

Halloween Shoots

Filed under: General photography,Rochester,Rochester Civic Theatre — Tony Drumm @ 7:21 pm

I shot a couple Halloween events this year. First up was the Fright Farm presented by Rochester Horror. These same folks dressed up their house in previous years each time adding more and more. But they’ve really outgrown the house. This year, they were out at the Olmsted County Historical Center where they had lots of room.

Shooting a haunted event poses some challenges as you might imagine beginning with lighting. Or lack thereof. My solution is to use a flash appropriately gel’d. I like a blue gel which evokes night and dark. For the Fright Farm, I had the flash on a cord, so it could be aimed anywhere. Lynne helped out. With a zoom lens, it is often a three-hand operation.

Where there are already colored lights – which is often – I try to keep my Speedlite from spoiling that mood, using it more to fill in the shadows a bit. It’s a balancing act and definitely a place to use eTTL with the flash exposure compensation dialed down. And ISO dialed up.

The other big issue is focus. This was especially true with the flash out on a cord. It will fire a red/IR beam the camera can use to help focus, but with it out on a cord, it’s tough to get it aimed at the proper subject. Manual focus isn’t a lot better since, well, there’s no light!

My son never liked clowns. I think they all looked like this to him.

We were walking along with one of the tours of paying customers, so I tried to stay out of their way and not overly flash the scenes. That usually means hanging back. That also allowed us to have the actors recreate something I missed because of the crowd.

The next night, Halloween night, I shot some photos at Rochester Civic Theatre’s Haunted Theatre. This was a single night event providing a tour of the theatre backstage, green room, and dressing area where various creatures, zombies, and other frights were found. For this tour, Lynne was busy handing out treats (one of our best years at the house), so I slapped the flash onto the camera and swung it around, up, or down to bounce the light. Blue gel again.

I was able to make a couple walk-throughs with the guides before the action began for real. It was a good help. I actually did some DSLR video on one walk-through. There are some usable bits, but it was really, really dark for much of the tour.

The theatre has some nice props which were used well. I think I’ve seen this casket before. In Dracula perhaps?

Out in the lobby, I grabbed a shot of a couple of our hosts. It’s fun to watch folks truly immerse themselves in a role if just for one night. I enjoy working with theatre people – in case that hasn’t been apparent!

If you’re going to take Halloween photos, you have to have a good zombie photo. This was mine, taken at the Fright Farm. I collected a few zombies and asked them to pose in the graveyard. I took a few shots before my battery died. I was prepared with a backup, but no need. I had the shot. This one warranted a little work in post to give it the effect I wanted. I think it works.

October 18, 2011

Kelby Photowalk 2011

Filed under: General photography,Rochester — Tony Drumm @ 5:54 pm

Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk moved from summer to autumn this year, and it was set for two days – the first and second of October. Walk groups could choose which day to hold their walk. Our group in Rochester had the walk on Sunday the second. We walked in downtown Rochester again this year and timed the walk to cover the golden hour around sunset.

It’s always fun to gather with several other photographers and shoot. And, of course, talk about gear and photography. We started by the Mayo Civic Center where I took the shot of the bridge. I particularly liked the reflection and the golden colors against the blue sky.

I shot the group photo with us gathered by the feet of the Mayo brothers. I used a bit of on-camera flash to fill in our faces as we stood in the shadow. The sky was clear, so the sunlight behind us was pretty bright.

Then we headed off. A number of us stayed more-or-less together, but others wandered off in different directions.

I think most, if not all, of us had at least one shot of this building. The bright yellow and orange draws your eye making it tough to not notice. The low sun added to the effect and, with much of the river in shadow, the reflection was pretty awesome. So this is my take on the photo of the yellow building!

Some of us later noticed the hot air balloon as it made its way across downtown. I had opted for my main walk-around lens, my 24-105mm, and I had my 50mm in my bag. Out for a walk, why would I need anything longer than that? Hmm. As soon as I saw the balloon I was naturally wishing I had brought something with more reach. But I did what I could at 105mm. I loved the ring of light on the left side from the setting sun. It just glowed, and a longer lens would have shown it off more. But I watched as it moved closer, moved into a position near the building, so I could at least frame it, have a foreground, middle-ground, and background. A decent shot, I think, but it could have been more.

I found these berries along one of the paths. I looked at the glow from the back-light and the dark leaves behind. They made a nice subject, and I love red anyway! I like to refer to these as red poison-berries. I have no idea what they really are or if they’re poisonous, but I like how it sounds. Goofy, I know.

I saw this young lady sitting in a swing by the river. The setting sun provided a wonderful light. And I saw the river and bridge in the background. I asked if she’d mind me taking her photo, and she generously agreed. She asked if I wanted her to turn around, but no, the shot was perfect like this. It made a nice color photo, but the textures and shades told me it would be a great black and white photo.

There was a time I thought landscape photography would be what I’d mostly like to shoot. I find I’m really drawn to people photography now. Interestingly, I think I’ve enjoyed shooting people for a very long time. I just didn’t realize it until recently. Funny how the mind works!

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