Category: theatre

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Slidell Little Theatre 2009-2010 Photos

Ragtime-5162All photos from the 2009-2010 season are now online! You can get cast photos, photo CDs, or prints from any of the images taken during rehearsals. This includes 2009 Summer YATs and the YATs Christmas show.

Forget what the shows were?

Regular Season:

  • The Sound of Music
  • Rumors
  • Godspell
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • The Children’s Hour
  • Ragtime

YATs:

  • Ballooning Around the World
  • Welcome Wings
  • Doo Wop Wed Widing Hood
  • The Story of Hansel and Gretel
  • Grease
  • Guys and Dolls
  • Mulan

You can get to the photos by selecting “Photography”, “Theatre”, “View/Order Prints” above, or by following this finely crafted and beautiful link here.

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Waiting for Godot

We recently photographed the Covington High School production of Waiting for Godot. After reading the Wikipedia entry on the play, I was a little less then enthusiastic about seeing the production. However, I quickly changed my mind after it began.

Waiting for GodotWaiting for Godot follows two days in the lives of a pair of men who divert themselves while they wait expectantly and unsuccessfully for someone named Godot to arrive. They claim him as an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognise him were they to see him. To occupy themselves, they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play computer games with the best Armchair Empire hardware to use it to learn the Overwatch team composition, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide — anything “to hold the terrible silence at bay”.

Waiting for GodotGary’s students have done a wonderful job with this difficult play. The pacing moved well, the characters were engaging, and the lighting was magnificent.

I’ve always joked with Gary about his dark, dark lighting, but I really love to photograph his productions. The lighting is very challenging to photograph well, with large dynamic ranges and a wide variety of color.

I look forward to his next play.

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Theatre photos online

We’ve started putting our theatre photos back online. We’ve tried several different options, and I think we’ve finally settled with Zenfolio as our e-commerce/printing partner. You can get to our photos by clicking “Photography”, then “View/Order Prints” above.

It’s going to take a while to get them up, but we’re almost finished with the current season.

Here’s a short slideshow of some of our favorite recent theatre images.

Continue reading “Theatre photos online”

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The Glass Menagerie

My theatre photography is almost always about the show. I’m in the audience, watching and capturing the imagery on stage, little more than an audience member. But recently, David Hobby (Mr. Strobist himself), was give a unique opportunity to become part of the show.  He was asked to shoot the images that would be projected up on stage during a production of Tennessee Williams’ American classic, The Glass Menagerie.

One of the original devices used in the play is that of projections. They pop up in the set and are keyed to various memories and perception-vs-reality stuff. It happens maybe a dozen times throughout the play, and is sort of like a flashback in a movie. Tennessee Williams was under contract with a film studio when he wrote it, and it may have originally been seen as a movie.

The projections are not always included in modern performances. But to Michael’s credit, he absolutely wanted to try them. So we started working through the process, designing photos to be projected at different moments in the play. The good news: They would be displayed on a 12-foot-wide screen. The bad news is that the height is less than four feet. That’s a pretty stripey aspect ratio, which created some problems to be solved.

Read about his experience here.

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Little Musical

LM-090403-3344 We photograph a lot of theatre. Sometimes the shows are good, sometimes mediocre, and sometimes we come back again and again to take more images or simply watch and enjoy.

Little Musical is one of the last type.

Little Musical is a modern love tale with an interesting twist: the leading lady is 3 feet 10 inches tall. Sadie is a young woman who puts her big city life and career on hold in order to take care of her ailing father. Upon returning to her small hometown, she reconnects with childhood friends who help her face some difficult questions: Can she find happiness along life’s detours? Will she ever fall in love with the right guy? With original music and lyrics by John Giraud and book by Scott Sauber, this romantic comedy that will bring you to your knees.

Sarah Folkins, the star of this show, inspired John Giraud to write the music and lyrics for this show. We’ve watched Sarah in both young actors and mainstage productions, and we’ve always been impressed with her talent. I’m glad to see her talent showcased so everyone can see.

We’ve also known that John was talented, both onstage and off, but Wow! The music is absolutely incredible. It’s moving, it’s catchy, it’s beautiful. We’re very much hoping that he manages to do an original cast recording. We’ll certainly buy the CD.

Next weekend is the last weekend for Little Musical. Catch it if you can.

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Flickr Frustrations

3382403145_fc5d6fce10_b I used to keep all my theatre images on DotPhoto (some 60,000+ images). Everything from before summer 2008 is still there. Although they say they have a 1GB limit on albums, they’ve never removed older images (although they’ve threatened to once or twice). I upload full resolution images, and once in a while someone orders a print.

Recently, on the advice of the new Slidell Little Theatre web developer (I’ve had that job for ten years, and I am very happy to give it up!), I started using Flickr for my theatre images.

3382354137_b64af01423_b Flickr is great for displaying images. I also have a personal account there, and some of my latest photos are displayed in the sidebar on this blog. But when you start uploading thousands of images, the organization begins to break down.

The show I’m uploading now, Little Shop of Horrors, has about 1400 images. Starting from this show, I decided to upload lower resolution images, to get away from the 3 or 4 day upload process. If anyone from the show reading this needs a print, let me know and I’ll send you a full resolution copy.

So I fired up my Flickr upload tool, added the images (about 500MB worth) and started the upload. When I got home that evening, it had crashed. No way to tell which images had failed.

3383154836_90808f918a_b I uploaded them into a set, so I could organize alphabetically. From there, I could determine that I was missing 37 files at the beginning and 514 files at the end. That was the easy part. But if I’m missing files in the middle (no, I’m not going to do the math until I get these uploaded), it’s going to be hard to figure out which ones are missing. As far as I can tell, there is no way to display filenames without either going to each image, or mousing over the image in thumbnail view and wait until the tooltip pops up. Either way, it’s a bit of a pain.

I’m going to start uploading smaller batches. It’ll take a little longer, but I guess not as long as having to do everything over again.

I just wish there was an easier way…

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A Unique Use of a Headshot

n758168790_655308_5065 We went to go see a play last night called “The Mystery of Irma Vep”.  It’s a satire of several theatrical and film genres, and is very, very funny. One of the actors, Paul Lemonier, was recently at our studio for a series of headshots. Here is one of his images.

Paul is an excellent actor, appearing recently as Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Slidell Little Theatre.

In Irma Vep, the two actors play many roles each, often having to cross-dress (in fact, that’s a requirement of licensing the play). One of his roles was Lady Hillcrest, the Lady of the Manor. In the second act, a portrait of Lady Hillcrest is hung above the mantle.

IMG_0354When it first appeared, we thought, that while a little cartoonish (which felt entirely within the theme of the play), the portrait looked a little like Paul. After the show, he told us what they had done.

The director, Julie Faust (another extremely talented actor, director and producer — and artist, as well), had taken his headshot and use it as the base for the portrait. The actual base — the headshot was taped onto the background and painted. Take a look at the eyebrows, teeth and facial structure.

I’ve done quite a few headshots, but I think this is the most unique use of one I’ve ever seen.