Production

Buried Child is  a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Sam Shepard, and the first production I shot for a young production company, Bay Area Stage. The first thing that struck me before action was called was the amazing attention paid to set design, art direction, and construction. It was easily the best set I’ve seen on a production of this size (as of yet–Bay Area Stage has a tendency to top themselves time after time).

Because of the general mood and tone of the play, it was a fairly dark show. Especially a challenge when you depend on (and hope for) as much light as possible to make sharp, clear photographs. More than a few times, I had to bring my shutter speed way below my normal level of comfort and employ Joe McNally’s “Da Grip“. I wouldn’t have had nearly as many keepers had it not been for this technique.

The other issue I had was storage. I had 20Gb with me in CF cards and I damn near ran out of space. the 7D makes huge raw files, anywhere from 23Mb to 32Mb in size, and in any given show I will snap the shutter 900-1000 times. I didn’t have a choice but to switch to JPG in the last few scenes. Luckily I did a custom white balance before the show and really concentrated on metering as accurately as possible, so all was well. But I’ll admit I was sweating shooting in JPG and not having the cushion of RAW. Still, I captured everything I wanted to, and I could see a marked improvement in exposure accuracy, composition, and my ability to click at “the moment” over the last couple of shows.

Either way, one of the bigger lessons here is that storage is cheap, and you should definitely invest in as much of it as you can.

See the whole set here.

Working with new production companies is exciting because there is a little extra of that intangible drive and excitement in everything they do. Lucky Penny Productions out of Napa is one such company. Having started in 2009, they have since put on 5 productions (and counting!), and they allowed me to shoot their production of Neil Labute’s play “The Shape of Things” at the Napa Valley Opera House.

Anyone that’s ever been to the NVOH knows that it is a huge place, but this production was a little different. Lucky Penny had the audience on the stage for an intimate performance, which made for an especially unique connection with the characters in the play. Keep your eye on Lucky Penny Productions for future shows!

See the whole set here.

I had a chance to shoot Helen Pau’s original play, “The Stone Wife” at the Berkeley City Club. The challenge of this show was that it was theater-in-the-round, which meant that I had to cover the performers from 360 degrees. In addition, I had to do so in a very confined space.

I was allowed to shoot an early dress rehearsal as a test run and to get familiarized with the actors’ blocking so I could make sure I was in the right spots at the right times to capture the best of the performances. The prep shoot helped quite a bit–the first time around I found myself photographing the actors’ backs more than I would like to admit. It was definitely one of the bigger challenges I’ve faced so far, because even though the performance was happening in a relatively small space, there was a lot of movement to keep up with.

After seeing the performance and getting to test shoot it once, I found that I was better prepared by the time the final dress rehearsal came around and all makeup, wardrobe, set pieces, and lights were in place. The director and producers were happy with the results.

See the whole set here.

Need photos for your theatrical production? Booking information.

Questions, comments, or just want to be social? Get in touch.