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

When Lindsey told me about a year ago they were hoping to produce Spamalot as the big Summerset Theatre musical in 2013, I thought, “how cool is that?” Summerset Theatre is in Austin, MN, the home of Hormel Foods making it the home of SPAM.

For the uninitiated, Spamalot is the musical theatre adaptation of the whacky movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That was the first movie by the British comedy group who created the TV series Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It was home to several folks who went on to star in many movies: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Wikipedia has a nice article about the group here.

It was a low-budget film, but it includes a couple songs that make it into the musical. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life written by Eric Idle for their film, Life of Brian, shows up along with many songs written specifically for this show. Most of the gags from the movie made the transition, so fans of the movie will be happy to see them.

Summerset adds a few extra Hormel references which are fun and very appropriate. We attended a special preview performance and fundraiser the other night with some fun hors d’oeuvres containing SPAM. They were really quite tasty, too!

Spamalot is one of two shows we’ve seen on Broadway. It was fun to revisit the show, remembering some of the gags right before they happen. As I’ve mentioned here before, though, I get caught up in shooting and making good images leading to me missing dialog. Knowing the show, I can sort this out, but it’s not really my focus anyway.

For this shoot, I had a helper along. Michaela is the daughter of good friends (I was going to say, old friends, but decided not to!). She’s an awesome dancer and high school student. She’s unbelievably passionate about and devoted to dance while still maintaining great grades in school. I don’t know how she does it, but I’m sure this work ethic will pay off whether as a professional dancer or whatever she ends up doing.

She’s expressed an interest in design and was looking for some opportunities to intern or get some first hand experience around the visual arts. I offered to take her along for a shoot. We met beforehand for me to explain how the shoot would go, what I’d be doing. And, I decided if she was going to be there, I’d give her my backup camera and put her to work. So, I also gave her a crash course in photography and in using the 5DMkII. Not only that, but I explained that shooting theatre is just tough to do with auto exposure, so I set her into my preferred manual mode. Yeah – here’s a camera, here’s how it works, now you get to set shutter speed and aperture on the fly.

For this rehearsal, Lindsey pulled Michaela into a little audience-participation bit, and you can see how uncomfortable she is on stage. Right. Her dad shoots Olympus, so I was happy to have this photo of her with a pro-level Canon around her neck!

As I look at this photo, it’s amazing to me that this is shot live and not staged. The cast was pretty great as you can see – they are just having a ton of fun with the show, and it was great to be there the next night when they finally had an audience to react to all the lines.

I had to include one of Michaela’s shots. I slapped the 50mm f/1.4 lens on her camera and let her have at it. Here you go folks – a high school student using an adjustable camera for the first time, shooting in manual, and very few of her shots didn’t have a good exposure. She stopped by again after the shoot, and we went through some my post-production workflow. She caught on quickly. If her dad has questions about Adobe Lightroom, I think he has a good resource in the house now!

The shoot was fun, the show was fun, and having a student was fun. What a great week!

I shot Summerset Theatre’s production of Steel Magnolias earlier this month. The show takes place in a beauty shop, as my mom would have called it. An all female cast take us through some important times in the lives of some of the characters as they support one another.

The large, single set is mostly brightly lit with a few exceptions. Much of the set is pink – a color with special meaning in the show – which provides some challenges in the photography department with its similarity to Caucasian skin tone. But there were some vividly colored costumes which help play against that pink.

Lighting was bright, but not as contrasty as we see in some shows. When we’re watching a show, subtle differences in the quantity of light across the stage go pretty much undetected. In the camera, though, these differences are pretty clear. A generally evenly lit stage might have a two stop variation over the span of just a few feet. Fortunately, we have tools to help us keep those differences under control.

Back in the darkroom days, we had similar tools – they just involved cardboard and wires!

When I’m shooting staged shots, I’ll sometimes ask the actors to move a bit to bring them into the light better, or to balance two actors a bit. When trying to tell the story in still images, we don’t always want balance – in fact, we mostly don’t. But when the main subject is in the dimmer area, that’s a problem.

Here, shooting live, I have to just live with the light I’m given. I then rely on Lightroom in postproduction.

An interesting aspect to shooting Steel Magnolias was the number of actors on stage. There were nearly always more than two women on stage at once, and often five or six. This gave me lots of opportunities to find interesting angles and views of two or three of the actors at once. Many compositions were of the sort that I just love to capture, so it was certainly a lot of fun to shoot.

Even with the bright set, there were some good angles that put the actors against the dark background off-stage. I like the contrast this produces. Even with a cool and interesting set, it’s nice to grab a few shots that set the folks off this way.

I was somewhat familiar with the story from seeing the movie years ago, but it’s been a while. I often get lost in the photography, but I was still able to keep an ear to the dialog well enough to follow along. It is important to have a general sense of the story to find that story in the photos I’m taking.

Next up for Summerset is Monty Python’s Spamalot. It was one of the few shows Lynne and I have seen on Broadway, and it’s a fun show for Python fans. It’s a musical theatre version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail complete with the song Knights of the Round Table from the movie. Having it produced in Spam-town will be fun indeed! It opens August 1.

This is a splendid season for Summerset. I Do! I Do! and Steel Magnolias have both been exceptional. No doubt Spamalot will be, too!

It’s Summerset Theatre’s season again. They’re once again running three shows the first of which was I Do! I Do! The story follows the married life of a couple from their wedding through old age, taking place essentially in their bedroom. We see their joy with their children and anguish with infidelity.

Shooting theatre live is always exciting and every show is different. Here is a show with a cast of two. You walk into such a show thinking, “how many photos will I shoot?” Can’t be a lot with two actors, right? Okay, it’s a musical. For me, those tend to push my counts up. But still, only two actors.

It turned out to be pretty crazy. Yes, there were slower times. I’d maybe grab several shots looking mainly to help ensure I had a few good, crisp shots from which to choose. Then, boom! Suddenly, they’re moving all over the stage, going in different directions. Facing this way and that way. Frantic.

Part of getting the shots I want is being in the right place at the right time. It doesn’t always happen, but I’m thrilled when it does, and I seem to have some help from somewhere. Many times it’s just moving a few feet or even a few inches this way or that. Study the viewfinder, see the image, and adjust.

That’s actually an excellent tip for any photography. You have to see the two-dimensional photograph when looking through the viewfinder and not allow your brain slip into normal vision where you see only what is important. Once you’re out of context and have the image as a photograph, you’ll see everything that you know wasn’t there. How could it be? You didn’t see it. But the camera did.

The set was just the one room with some items brought on and off during scene changes. But we did have a bit fun lighting along the way, something I always enjoy.

The two actors did a remarkable job, and kept up their energy throughout the show. There were only a very few short breaks when only one of the two were on stage, so that’s saying a lot. The songs were fun and my friend Jan was awesome on piano as usual along with her small orchestra.

I’m slowly catching up with some of my theatre work. The Producers is finally finished, I Do! I Do! is close, and I think Kill Me Deadly is in flight. Meanwhile, I also shot a dance performance live which, I think, turned out fantastic and was so much fun to shoot.

Next up at Summerset is Steel Magnolias which opens in a couple weeks. Then, they will finish their season with Spamalot which should be a riot, especially in Spam City. I love that Summerset keeps me shooting theatre during the summer. And it’s great to have live theatre productions to carry us through to the fall.

(Reminder: Check out my contest here! It runs until the morning of May 5, 2013 – so you have just about one more week left to enter.)

This week, I photographed the musical, Little Women, at Riverland Community College in Austin, MN. It’s a well-known story, but one I’ve never read or otherwise knew much about. It was fun to learn the story, and we attended the show as audience members on Thursday. I often miss a lot of the story when I’m doing my photographer thing, since I’m more focused on the action and visual aspects of the production.

I really liked the staging of this show. The set was relatively simple, and the scene changes were done in a snap keeping things moving along for the audience. It’s also fun to see many familiar faces, as I’ve now shot quite a few Riverland shows.

Costumes were outstanding. I’m sure that’s both a big opportunity and a big challenge for a period piece. But, there were quite a range of colors and textures which are great for the photos. The staging also provided many good compositions for me to grab, especially when the sisters and Marmee, their mother, are all together. The first photo above, for instance, is hard for a photographer to miss – how can that not produce a great photo?

Musicals usually have one or even several solos in which we focus just on the one person, singing about his or her feelings, emotions. Usually lit with spots, I just need to find a good place from which to shoot, and try to find an expression that tells the story of that moment. With the background dropping to black, it’s easy to draw the attention to the actor. I love these shots.

Other moments are poignant, and I look for the right angle. The blocking makes my job easier. Fortunately, the performance is visual, not just about songs and dialog, so the director helps me by setting these compositions for me!

And, of course, the actors do their part for me, too. I’m not sure they are really doing it for me, but I can pretend!

The show runs another weekend. The summer will bring three shows to Riverland’s Frank W. Bridges Theatre produced by Summerset Theatre including the Monty Python show, Spamalot. I’m really looking forward to that.

Next up for me is shooting The Producers at Rochester Civic Theatre. Shows have been selling out, so if you want to see it – and my photo display in the lobby – purchase your tickets soon. If you attend next Saturday, say “hello” as I’ll be there, too. And again, check out my contest!