I photographed the Festival Theater production of A Christmas Carol over the weekend and really enjoyed the interpretation the theater had of this iconic holiday play. I am actually continually amazed at how well the local non-professional actors do at the Festival. A lot has to do with the direction, this time under Jackie Johnson's guidance.
Although some might think of this production as a "dark" play - the lighting is intentionally darker and relies on spot-lit scenes - the essence of the experience of the play really stands out. Most of the plot takes place in Scrooge's dreams on Christmas Eve after he was particularly cruel to his assistant, Bob Cratchett, that day at work. The ghosts that visit him in his dreams are very well done. Costuming is great. Acting is pretty good as well.
The photography was tricky. Because it was dark on the stage, and that the spotlighting was also somewhat subdued, it was hard to expose the frame so that the faces were not so bright as to be unrecognizable while at the same time showing the rest of the partially lit scene in good exposure as well. The Canon 5D Mark III did the job once I worked through how it was supposed to read the scene.
Exposures turned out OK, but they all required some editing improvements. The Photos editing function on my Mac worked that out just fine.
The experience of shooting these theater productions is fun because there is some emotional action in my viewfinder that I need to capture in order to report what is happening with the play. It's fun to do that...almost like photographing a real scene.
Next up is the publicity photo for the Theater in the Round production of Shakespeare's Richard III. That'll be a real challenge, but really fun to tackle it. I'll report on the results here later.
RPW
Although some might think of this production as a "dark" play - the lighting is intentionally darker and relies on spot-lit scenes - the essence of the experience of the play really stands out. Most of the plot takes place in Scrooge's dreams on Christmas Eve after he was particularly cruel to his assistant, Bob Cratchett, that day at work. The ghosts that visit him in his dreams are very well done. Costuming is great. Acting is pretty good as well.
The photography was tricky. Because it was dark on the stage, and that the spotlighting was also somewhat subdued, it was hard to expose the frame so that the faces were not so bright as to be unrecognizable while at the same time showing the rest of the partially lit scene in good exposure as well. The Canon 5D Mark III did the job once I worked through how it was supposed to read the scene.
Exposures turned out OK, but they all required some editing improvements. The Photos editing function on my Mac worked that out just fine.
The experience of shooting these theater productions is fun because there is some emotional action in my viewfinder that I need to capture in order to report what is happening with the play. It's fun to do that...almost like photographing a real scene.
Next up is the publicity photo for the Theater in the Round production of Shakespeare's Richard III. That'll be a real challenge, but really fun to tackle it. I'll report on the results here later.
RPW