A.D. Drumm Images, LLC – Landscape, Portrait, and Fine Art Photography in Rochester MN Photography

We shot the show photos for Black Comedy on Saturday. It was great to see the show a second time – we had attended opening night. It’s a farce, and it has every important element of a farce – most importantly, it’s very very funny!

Black Comedy uses an interesting concept – nearly all of the show takes place in the dark or near dark. To overcome this problem – how do you put on a play in the dark? – the lighting is reversed. When the characters are in the dark, the stage is fully lit. When they have light, the stage is dark. It’s quite a hoot to watch the actors seemingly stumbling in the “dark” when they are fully lit. But the audience also gains a new perspective, seeing facial reactions by characters who know the others can’t see them.

It’s tons of fun and was interesting to photograph. Greg, our esteemed director, once again uses everyone on stage and the entire stage to craft the show. So, there are quite a few longer shots to try to capture all that’s happening. The shot above is one for which I realized my house-center position was just losing its impact. Luckily, I realized this pretty quickly and had Ben and Christina position themselves a second time when I moved audience left to capture the perspective I wanted. Ben’s a trooper. He’s also rather bruised from the show! Did I mention all the physical comedy?

Photographically, this shot was one of my favorites. I did a bit of post work on it in Lightroom. There are a few shots that involved someone lighting a match or a lighter or a candle or a flashlight. In keeping with the mixed-up lighting theme, the lights dim when someone produces some lighting device.

I try to respect the stage by not overworking my shots. I want them to still provide the feel of a stage production, but sometimes I feel I can enhance reality a bit keeping the integrity of the shot while also adding a bit more emotion than what a straight-from-camera image would give. The theatre experience is more than just flat, two-dimensional images.

In this case, I darkened the background leaving highlights approximately where the match light would fall. But I didn’t try to go fully realistic. If I had, the background would have been reduced to black and there are some strong shadows from the overhead stage lights which would need to be addressed. But as it is, I think it looks good and produces the right reaction. And it looks like it might very well have looked like this on stage.

Some shots are just fun. They give us a taste of the show – it’s just wacky and a riot. This scene took place in the upstairs bedroom of the apartment. Time for a long lens and a bit longer exposure due to the reduced light up there. After shooting many shows, you learn that there are places on stage that have pretty hot light and others that tend to have much less, in general. There are exceptions and, of course, there are moodier lighting cues. But certainly center stage and down stage, though not right at the front, have the most light. As you move from there, the light drops off. Shooting manual mode, you need to adjust for this.

This was a shoot with a lot lower intensity than, say Beauty and the Beast. There’s only one box set, there are only a few props moving on and off stage and a minimum of costume changes. It’s a much smaller cast, and they are all very experienced. And they know the drill when Greg is setting up the shots and I’m shooting. The shoot went quickly.

The show runs one more weekend. It’s the sort of show where you leave your concerns and cares at the door and just laugh until it hurts. In short, it’s a great way to spend an evening!

For the past several years, I’ve had the pleasure of creating the show posters for Rochester Civic Theatre. They are displayed in the lobby, and the artwork is used in the season brochure and, generally, for ads. This is a collaborative effort with Greg Miller, artistic director at the theatre, providing small sketches showing the rough concept. For the most part, my posters are photo-based, although I’ve strayed into more graphic realms now and then. But there’s always at least one photo somewhere in the mix.

The season and the posters are unveiled at the opening of their traditional spring musical. Disney’s Beauty and the Beastopened last Friday marking the announcement of RCT’s 60th season. The new season shows are kept secret until the announcement, so I can’t really show off my posters before then. (BTW, tickets for Beauty are going fast, so order yours now!)

I fortunately knew the season shows last autumn which allowed me to grab a headstone shot before the ground was covered in the usual all-winter-long snow. We can finally see grass again in our yard! I spend a lot of time in Photoshop working on these, but I didn’t really want to try removing two or three feet of snow and inserting grass if I could avoid it.

The concept for this poster was pretty simple. In fact, the working sketch I drew as Greg didn’t get to it. A young woman, her beau, and her father form the basis of the show with an underlying baseball theme. I struggled with making that image stand out until I hit on this magazine cover idea. Sometimes, you see something and it just hits you – Aha! Then it was a matter of working the tag line, credits, and opening date into the image in a way that suggests a magazine cover.

White Christmas was the easiest poster. The show is coming back for an encore after having a huge sell-out crowd last December. We’re reusing the poster from last season with the “back by popular demand” addition. I spent more time on it than I really had to, but I wanted this add-on to be more than just a simple text box. Trying to add a little class to it.

I still remember getting my car stuck when I was out shooting the box in the snow last year. I sort of think of that whenever I see this image. For some reason.

This poster has a more involved story than the others. Although I had the headstone image in the bag at the time, the first other shot I did was this background which I took in a meadow at Yosemite in January. I specifically was looking for a shot that would work while I was there, and came home with quite a collection of shots I probably otherwise would not have taken.

Then there was the wardrobe. Where to find a decent wardrobe to shoot which had the right look and size? I even checked some of the stock photo sites, but a straight on shot is rare. I finally decided to see what I could manage drawing the wardrobe myself. I did my best to channel Bert Monroy and Corey Barker who do terrific computer illustration work.

While I didn’t draw the outside of the doors (they’re very ornate, I’m sure!), I did create side pillars with several levels and ornaments. They’re right back there behind the doors.

A few years ago, one of the sketches Greg made had this leg and a gun with Chicago in bold letters. Before I had a chance to start working on it, he informed me, no, we can’t obtain the rights to the show. At least once more since then, they thought it was a go but turned out not.

When I heard Chicagowas on the slate for 2012, my reaction was, “really?” Are we sure? Yes. The first version of this poster had the title along the top, but we opted for more leg! Photoshop was used to enhance this image, but the photo involved three flashes with three different gels. I just love using gels.

This was a fun photo to shoot. Yes, the pillar is a stage prop, but trust me, it’s heavy! I was hoping Brad could keep it from crushing the rest of the gang before I was done and had the shot I wanted. That’s Greg on the left.

There you have it, the shows for season 60 and the product of my work over the past couple months. I use Photoshop regularly, but working on these posters always expands my knowledge of the tool and my comfort using it along with my Wacom tablet. It also increasingly taxes the ability of my main computer where I’m finding I really need to upgrade. But we work with what we have.

When I shot show photos for RCT’s production of Cuckoo’s Nest, it was once again the shots with dramatic lighting that I prefer. There was a sizable cast, and for many scenes most of them were on stage. That makes it a bit trickier to find a good composition. I like to include many of the players, but the impact of the shot is sometimes lost. Besides, often there are interesting goings-on across the stage. Maybe I need to create a mega-image like Bert Monroy’s fabulous Times Square painting!

For this show, a lot of scenes take place in the daytime with all the “inmates” on stage. The daytime lighting in the facility is white and pretty even. I can do some postprocessing to help draw the attention where it’s desired, but white light is white light.

There are exceptions, and those are where I’m drawn in looking over my images. Dim, blue, nighttime stage lighting. It’s really wonderful for setting a mood and telling a story. Having some decent hardware helps to capture a decent image, and having patient actors who can hold their position helps, too. For some shows, holding a position while I shoot several shots, zoom in or out, make some adjustment, then shoot several more is asking a lot of them. I appreciate that there are seldom hints of complaints.

Some of the lighting is dramatic in its own way. Is a room for electro-shock therapy really dark, really lit so harshly? It doesn’t matter – this is theatre. Lighting is part of the experience like music in a movie. It provides or emphasizes a mood, an emotion. And it translates to photography, an art centered on light, perfectly. I can present this same mood and emotion in a still image using what the lighting director has given us. I love it.

It’s been many years since I saw the Jack Nicholson movie, and I’ve never before seen the stage version. I enjoyed it thoroughly. We are fortunate to have such talented folks here and such a wonderful venue. Theatre is a moment. Each performance is different in subtle or not so subtle ways. When the run is done, it, like a life, is gone and exists just in our memories. Capturing that moment, trying to give it a new and different life, is my pleasure.

The December show at RCT was White Christmas, and it sold out before opening night. The holiday season brings folks to the theatre. Saturday, we did show photos. There was a lot of talent out on stage in this show (and backstage as well!), so I’m pleased the photos turned out well.

This was a fun shot. Mike Tri, as the general, flings all the bills his inn has received into the air after he finds them. That happen behind the rehearsing entertainers. I counted down, he flung the envelopes, and I blasted away on the continuous setting of my camera. This gave me several options with the envelopes in the air. I liked this one best.

This was a fun shot. Stage lighting is a bit harsh, so a bit of post-processing on this shot produced more even lighting for all the performers including Leslie at the bottom.

I like when we can reproduce a special moment from the show in a still shot like this. We have the cool lighting effect with the color balance looking pretty much spot on. And we have the two performers bringing their emotion to life with a nice sharp focus. Can’t ask for much more.

With big productions, it’s easy to be lulled into shooting large, trying to grab the entire scene. But that just doesn’t work that well for still shots. Everyone becomes diminished – small. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable like in the shot above with the envelopes. We really do need to see the entire stage of performers. But it’s not satisfying to me.

Here, we have a great scene in the show with the guys doing the Sisters act during a rehearsal. I have another shot showing just the two guys, but I prefer this one. Having the women in the background looking on seems to give the shot more life.

I do like the tender shots. Here again, the lighting was great, the actors bring emotion to the shot, and we capture a great photo.

As of today, the day after White Christmas closed, we’ve set a record for the most snowfall in Rochester, MN for December. It’s not winter until tomorrow, and there are still 11 days left in the month. Many of us close to the theatre are wondering if this is all coincidence. We think not.

Wednesday evening, RCT held the next in its Americana Showcase series. This was the Trashy Little Christmas Show featuring Trailer Trash from the Twin Cities. They made a similar appearence last year, but I missed that show.

The format for this show was different from the other showcases I’ve attened. Normally, we have four or five singer/songwriters sharing the stage taking turns. It’s an intimate environment and a lot of fun. This show, though, was more of a band concert.

The evening was kicked of with a viewing of a music video featuring Brandon Sampson and Six Mile Grove centered around Brandon’s father, a long time farmer. The video was well done and helped set the mood. Then Six Mile Grove played for us. Brandon is the originator of the Americana series, performs at all of them, but this was the first time I heard his full band play; they were great!

Of course, I had my camera along with one lens and one CF card. I decided if I filled the card, I would just be done shooting! I chose my new 135 EF f/2.0L lens. I’m loving the lens.

It’s sharp, it has terrific shallow depth of field capability with the f/2.0 aperture setting. And fast lenses like this provide the focusing system in the camera with plenty of light, so focusing is nice and fast, too.

If you read my posts here, you know I love a challenge. It’s how one moves forward, learns, explores, experiments, and flexes those photographic muscles. The challenge this time was using a single, fixed-focal-length lens. No zoom means you zoom with your feet. Or you just compose a shot using the image the lens gives you wherever you are.

The high resolution of the 5DMkII provides some flexibility in post. As I walked through the shots in Lightroom, I did fiddle with cropping here and there. But I was happy that the photos generally had a composition I liked. Most of what I did with the crop tool was tweaking.

When you’re after shallow depth of field, indeed you need to compose the shot well in camera. DOF changes with distance. Get too far away and that DOF you wanted is no more.

I saw Gregory, the executive director before the show. He asked if I would be taking photos. I held up the camera and smiled. Gregory cleared me to move around at will and shoot from backstage if I’d like. When I’m shooting at events, I try to be as discrete as possible. It’s someone else’s show – I’m just shooting.

I do my best at shows like this. I usually notice everyone who’s taking photos, but I’m sensitve to it. There were a few others shooting at the show, but they were all respectful, thoughtful.

Certainly, there are some shots you can only get from backstage. Bring in the lights and show the entertainers’ point of view. Bright lights, dark house.

Music and movement, song and voice. Expressing this in still photos is interesting and presents yet another challenge. I find I look for angles and expressions of the players to tell this story. It never ceases to be hugely enjoyable. Add in some terrific live music – both bands were terrific – and we have a great night!