On stage at Backstage

[easternlight]

Amateurtheater is fun! I have been asked to photograph their performance. Difficult light circumstances, so I had to use a 50mm f 1,8 and a 18-70mm f3.5 with larger ISO and a tripod to make photo's. Here is one of them. C&C welcome.

[Shadowman]

Not bad, good exposure and the colors are very bold, bit of noise visible here and there. Why did you use -2 exp bias, was it for the lights reflecting off the chairs? Where are these going to be displayed?

[easternlight]

The -2 exposure was chosen to get a acceptable shutter time, next to the high iso and the F 1.8, this due to the low lighting. My camara, a Nikon D80, is not that sofisticated in dynamic range. In this case I leaned on the railing with the lens and did not use a tripod.

The photo's are for internal use and will be shown on their facebook and homepage and can be seen on my smugmug account.

[RustBeltRaw]

If the photo's only going on Facebook, you're probably fine. I like the colors and gesture, but I think it's white-balanced a tad warm. Did you crop the image? If so, try shifting the crop area to the right and see if you like it better. She's centered, but to my eye, her boots are crowding the right edge of

[Rob Ekins]

Koos,

You are in a really strong position as far as shooting events goes, I think you should take advantage of that to benefit your images and to also give "The client" more to use in marketing for future events. As you say they will be using your shots in house and on social media.

If I was you I would be talking to the director, producer, stage manager, lighting director, who ever, to set up a shot that works as a "Hero shot" for you and them.

The shot you have now is fairly typical of amateur theater lighting but you could get a much better result if you were given some time during rehearsals or just before to set up a shot with the LX crew and director. Every body wins.. especially the lighting folk we love great shots of our work on the web

If you do get the opportunity to re shoot with control of the environment the following is what I would try to achieve.

1) Get some control of the colour temps/white balance.

This shot is typical of an amateur theater, with tungsten lamps as front lights and daylight back and sides, unfortunately the tungsten front light is usually dimmed so heavily so as not to upset the cast that the colour temp drops considerably and makes the back lights look even bluer. Get the cast to stand on their spike and shoot some shots with the front lights at 100% and you will see a real difference in colour. If you don't like that, adjust the keys(Front) and kickers(Side) to get the colour or contrast you like.

2) Reflections..
You have some pretty reflective set there and what looks to be a limited 3 point front lighting set up so move around a bit to avoid those reflections. Look up and see where the lights are coming from and think family of angles.

3) Backgrounds...
In Photography we generally have a foreground and a background, on stage I tend to treat this as four steps, foreground, midground, background near, and background far. In your shot you have the actors in the foreground, set in the midground and black drapes in the background near and nothing after. Try rear lighting the vanity shield from the ground to throw some shadows up it that will high light the frame.. Also try throwing some lamps up the drape or wall what ever it is behind the set and lose them slightly with DOF it will break up the big lack abyss behind that structure nicely.


Hope this helps..
Robbie.

[easternlight]

Dear Robbie,

Thank your for your extended reply. This will help me sure thing! I will copy and paste this for future sessions, I will propose a reshoot, but doubt that this will happen. Meanwhile for future sessions, I will insist in time for a photoshoot, where I can control the lighting, that is a real good advice.

Regards,
Koos

P.S. Here is another one, but with different lighting