Back into the Theater for some afternoon fun.

Reading novels, eating bonbons and watching rose petals float lazily to the table top.

It was hot and swampy around here yesterday afternoon. I was chilling out in the air conditioning and patting myself on the back for cleaning the interior and exterior coils. Reading a novel and watching the petals dropping off the roses I bought a while back. It's been a good year for the roses...

My watch jiggled to  remind me that I was due downtown in about an hour to photograph a rehearsal for the comedy troupe, Esther's Follies.  I got up off the couch and headed out to the office to throw together some gear for the afternoon's project. I knew what to expect having photographed in their theater forty or fifty times over the last decade. 

The actors there are constantly in motion so I knew I wanted to bring along flash gear. But I wanted to keep everything highly portable. I settled on three of the Godox AD200 Pro flashes with their very good and efficient round heads. The round heads have magnetic accessories that attach to them. They also have three step, LED modeling lights built in. With stage lighting in play there really isn't much need for the modeling lights but it's nice to glance up at a light and know that it's on and still functioning. 

I'm into a small umbrella groove these days and so I packed three 32 inch soft silver Westscott umbrellas. They are small and light and packable. They are also dirt cheap at about $20 each. If you happen to destroy one you won't cry too hard. I compromised on size in one regard by bringing bigger light stands because I knew I wanted my lights up above face level for the actors on the stage. 

I  only packed a couple of cameras; both Leica SLs. I was feeling lazy and pretty much determined to shoot everything with the Leica 24-90mm zoom lens. The lens brings image stabilization with it but, with flash, and a sync speed around 1/125th of a second, I really wasn't worried about camera shake. 

Everything I needed fit nicely into two backpacks. And, of course, being a former Boy Scout I also packed a small first aid kit, two radio triggers, extra memory cards and enough camera batteries to last a week....because you never know. 

I was worried when I bought the new car that I would miss the space of an SUV. The ability to bring along everything I ever imagined I'd need on a photo shoot. I needn't have worried since the trunk of the Legacy Sport is capacious. Everything fit with tons and tons of space left over. 

I headed into downtown, found a parking space across the street from the theater and headed in. We started our photography at four in the afternoon and it was like an episode from a speed dating show. The theater folks were out for quantity. We set up a pretty straightforward, three light stage wash with the flashes and dragged the shutter a bit to get some of the color from the stage lighting into the images. 

And then we plowed through the shot list with costume changes, cast changing and background changes galore. I shot most stuff while standing on a chair, laughing at all the great comic content, and blazing through variations of each set up. We had a hard stop at 5:15 so the cast could prep, re-set and then have some downtime before their first show of  the evening: 7:00 p.m. 

It took me ten minutes to break everything down, do a quick check of the images on  the back screen of the camera and head back out the door. I'll be back down tomorrow evening to document a live show from one of the front rows. All available stage lights for that go around. 

I ended up making 750 images and I've just gone through the take and done a bit of color and contrast correction. The SL cameras continue to bring a big smile to my face and I'm so happy to be shooting 24 megapixel files instead of trying to plow through bigger 47.5 megapixel or 61 megapixel files. Breath of fresh air. The autofocus on the old cameras rocks. The finder is beautiful, and once or twice I tried to embrace the Gen Z mentality by holding my camera at arm's length and staring, squinting and otherwise trying to decipher the images on the rear screen while photographing. 

Loving all your comments and wry responses to the blog posts. Keep em coming. 

in between shots it's cool to just keep shooting for fun. 

 one version among many of "the group shot." 

The de-evolution between set-ups. 

It only becomes "magic" when they actually make the box float....

And the classic, "Jill on the Piano" shot.

A few more projects on the books for next week. 

Keeps the Summer interesting. 

When the triple digits hit I'm heading North to Montreal. 

I love shooting photos in that city. It's just so cool. 

Literally and figuratively.