Theatre 'posed' shots and thanks!

If you recall, I'm very new to strobes (first set of strobes purchased in Nov) and have received some good advice here as I work through the learning curve. So here is a story and results from an ever learning strobe newbie.

I had to shoot a musical and that I've done before, but they wanted some promo shots before.

So I brought my strobes just in case, but the idea was to do this with the stage light banks. It turned out not only was the set not complete, but more of shock was that the stage light people are not even showing up for this dress rehersal!!!

And the cast was going to be doing 'notes' first so I had time to set up the lights. Not! I'm standing there just pulling out the first light and finding plugs and the entire cast, in costume and makeup is standing there watching me. I ask what is up...they are waiting for me! So anyway, I got the lights up in a hurry because they still had a run through to do after.

Ugh, just me, no helper, and we run through about 30 shots on a long list of pre-planned poses the producer has, many that required changes in lighting set up. None of them the way I would have preferred if I had more time to set up the shots better. They needed some for the press release the next morning. Last min in every way!

But anyway, your advice helped a lot as I was able to set up at least enough not to blow it. These are not great, but two ran in the Washington Post (not shown here and not ones I would have picked) which was cool. So here are a few of the posed shots, stobed, no stage lights. I like the ones of that actual play a lot more (a few of those went out on another post so none of those on this post)...but my point is that you guys helped me feel comforable enough with the lights to do this completely with my strobes and while not perfect, they worked.

Thanks to you all! Will show some next time when it works out better...and we (the producers for the theatre and I) decided that better communication beforehand is good idea.





And we did some whole cast shots...after the traditional, I had them all do some different 'experssions' and this is the out-of-character "suprised" look which was fun for them.



Will be doing more with them so will have time to improve.

C&C encouraged, always looking to improve.

Having recently tried theatre shots myself, I am very appreciative of how good these are.

Posing for stage photographs: composition, cropping, staging, lighting and impact

Shane,

I like these! On the group shot where the b.g. is uninteresting, crop accordingly. Here take this as a more panoramic view of the cast. So crop away 50-80% of the bare stage and even trim the wall behind them. Then present a larger width image so faces can be seen and the costumes enjoyed.

However, I have criticisms of framing: don't cut of hands and arms as you have done and in the last one everyone's face, including the kids have to be visible.

In the best imaging you will select the people with the poses you want and have the others posing to balance that. There should, with a postured staging be an idea and pattern in what you are doing. The free for all is good to, but then they have to face the camera!

Asher