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

April 28, 2013

Riverland’s production of Little Women

Filed under: Theatre — Tony Drumm @ 10:43 am

(Reminder: Check out my contest here! It runs until the morning of May 5, 2013 – so you have just about one more week left to enter.)

This week, I photographed the musical, Little Women, at Riverland Community College in Austin, MN. It’s a well-known story, but one I’ve never read or otherwise knew much about. It was fun to learn the story, and we attended the show as audience members on Thursday. I often miss a lot of the story when I’m doing my photographer thing, since I’m more focused on the action and visual aspects of the production.

I really liked the staging of this show. The set was relatively simple, and the scene changes were done in a snap keeping things moving along for the audience. It’s also fun to see many familiar faces, as I’ve now shot quite a few Riverland shows.

Costumes were outstanding. I’m sure that’s both a big opportunity and a big challenge for a period piece. But, there were quite a range of colors and textures which are great for the photos. The staging also provided many good compositions for me to grab, especially when the sisters and Marmee, their mother, are all together. The first photo above, for instance, is hard for a photographer to miss – how can that not produce a great photo?

Musicals usually have one or even several solos in which we focus just on the one person, singing about his or her feelings, emotions. Usually lit with spots, I just need to find a good place from which to shoot, and try to find an expression that tells the story of that moment. With the background dropping to black, it’s easy to draw the attention to the actor. I love these shots.

Other moments are poignant, and I look for the right angle. The blocking makes my job easier. Fortunately, the performance is visual, not just about songs and dialog, so the director helps me by setting these compositions for me!

And, of course, the actors do their part for me, too. I’m not sure they are really doing it for me, but I can pretend!

The show runs another weekend. The summer will bring three shows to Riverland’s Frank W. Bridges Theatre produced by Summerset Theatre including the Monty Python show, Spamalot. I’m really looking forward to that.

Next up for me is shooting The Producers at Rochester Civic Theatre. Shows have been selling out, so if you want to see it – and my photo display in the lobby – purchase your tickets soon. If you attend next Saturday, say “hello” as I’ll be there, too. And again, check out my contest!

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April 17, 2013

A Contest!

Filed under: Contests — Tony Drumm @ 5:18 pm

I’ve decided to celebrate my photo display at Rochester Civic Theatre by holding a contest! The winner will receive a 13×19 fine art (giclée) print matted to 18×24 of his or her favorite photograph from a collection of those I’ve previously displayed at the theatre. (North America only, please.)

Here’s how it works. Go to my A.D. Drumm Images page on Facebook (here). Like me (hah!) if you haven’t already. Then find the Facebook post referring to this blog post and add a comment tell me which photo is your favorite. The available photos are in my fine art gallery, but you can skip right to it via this link.

When you click an image in the gallery, it will show the title of the photo (like Root River Valley in Autumn, the name of this photo). Just add a comment to Facebook saying what the title of your favorite photo is. I’ll draw a winner on Sunday, May 5, 2013. I hope you enjoy the photos and the contest. And good luck!

Summary:

North America only – sorry for those of you in other regions.

Look over the photos in the contest gallery and pick your favorite.

Find the Facebook post referring to this blog post, “like” A.D. Drumm Images, and add a comment telling me which photo is your favorite.

Enter only once, please, and add your comment by 9 AM Central Daylight Time on 5 May 2013.

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April 6, 2013

Philadelphia Story at Riverland

Filed under: General photography,Theatre — Tony Drumm @ 8:35 am

Well, things have been busy here since I returned from Grand Canyon! There have been various shoots – including a wonderful session with my grandson to celebrate his first six months. I’ve created a couple posters that will be on stage in Max’s office of Rochester Civic Theatre’s production of The Producers. Looking forward to that – it’s fun having your work up on stage! And, I’ve been preparing prints to be displayed in the RCT lobby during the run of The Producers. What I haven’t been doing is blogging!

I thought I’d post up a few shots from my recent photo shoot of The Philadelphia Story at Riverland Community College in Austin.

I’m actually not familiar with the Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn film. When shooting a show live, I seem to maintain only a slight connection to the actual story. I’m focused on the visual elements and trying to capture the sense of the show in my pictures. What I do see and understand are the expressions of the actors.

Most of the action in the story happens in a box set of this one large room. The wall color add some nice interest, but the lighting plays less of a factor in a show like this than in a, say, a musical or a show with deeper themes such as Shadowlands I recently shot. Working with this lighting, my goal is to capture expressions, interactions between actors, and other compositional elements – leading lines or triangular compositions.

On either side of the box set, we had small set elements used now and then. Those gave me nice dark backgrounds helping to pull the actor or actors out.

And some of the more intimate interactions happened in these small sets.

It’s interesting and fun to shoot a variety of shows. A romantic comedy is different to shoot than a farce which is different from a musical. I begin each shoot looking over the set, thinking about possibilities, and where I should be standing. Or, more correctly, what various places might make good shooting positions.

With a live shoot, sometimes my positioning works out, sometimes not, but thinking about it up front helps. As the players move, I try to see the composition I want and react accordingly. It’s always challenging and always a blast.

This year is shaping up to be an excellent one for local theatre. RCT has already announced their 2013-2014 season which kicks of with Les Misérables this fall. I can’t wait to shoot that show. And, of course, The Producers opens in less than a week. (And, a week from tonight, my photo display will be up in the lobby!) That was the first show we saw on Broadway. The other show we saw on Broadway, Spamalot, will be produced by Summerset Theatre in Austin, MN this summer. Very cool, and it will be fun having Spamalot playing in the city that’s home of its namesake meat. Then the Plainview Community Theater has announced their musical for the fall, Wizard of Oz.

So, folks, you have no excuses – get out of your easy chair an into a theatre!

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February 27, 2013

K&M Adventures – Grand Canyon

Filed under: General photography — Tony Drumm @ 8:56 pm

I love photographing people, but heading outdoors to experience the earth and nature can be tremendously rewarding. As a photographer, it can be challenging trying to capture the wonders around us into a simple photograph. Adding to that challenge are the iconic places so often photographed. How do we bring something new to the table? How do we infuse a photograph with something of ourselves?

I enjoy workshops, spending time with other photographers while learning something new or absorbing some of the artistic energy of the workshop leaders, making it part of my own artistic makeup. I’ve now attended three workshops run by Moose Peterson, a renowned wildlife and landscape photographer. The first Moose workshop I attended was in Kauai a few years ago, part of his Digital Landscape Workshop Series. Even though I’d been shooting for years, the experience was amazing, and I think it’s fair to say it changed my photography.

The DLWS workshops, held for several years, are now history. His new venture is K&M Adventures, run with his good friend, Kevin Dobler. Kevin was also a regular instructor at DLWS, and like Moose, loves landscape and wildlife photography.

Wouldn’t you know, Moose announced a K&M Adventures trip to Grand Canyon. I visited the canyon when I was 15. While it would be a few years before I’d use an SLR, I still had a strong interest in photography. I remember the disappointment with capturing the grandeur of the place on film. It’s just so big it defies our efforts to describe it in an image. Frankly, standing on the rim, it is surreal even in person. So, it seemed the perfect location to learn and Moose and Kevin were the perfect photographers to teach. I called to sign up right away.

K&M Adventures really is a different concept and approach. The group is limited to eight students, and we spent nearly the entire time together – sunrise shoots, then breakfast, a noon get-together for questions and one-on-one help with finishing photos, then our sunset shoot, and finally dinner. Meal times were great with lots of socializing and laughs. Kevin is a flight instructor, so I could talk photography and flying – pretty much all I could ask for!

Then there was the shooting. We had terrific photo weather the first couple days (that is, cloudy and snowy). Clouds bring character to the canyon. Blue skies make it tougher to add drama to a photo. In an iconic place like Grand Canyon that has been photographed regularly for the past 150 years or so, we need a little drama.

When there were tons of clouds, the entire canyon could be filled with white – clouds and snow – and there’s nothing to see. Or, they could pass by, opening the canyon for us while providing a snowy region to make the subject of a photo. Clouds give life to the rocks. Indeed, such a landscape exists because of the interactions of rock and water.

But even an evening with just some high clouds could be good. I’ll never forget the evening shooting before the sunset looking for something, anything, that might really pull me in and help involve someone viewing my photo. Sort of an okay sunset, but nothing special. Then, just as the sun disappeared, the canyon literally lit up with magenta light. It happened in the course of a minute or so.

In fact, I was pretty much done shooting, when, WOW! Surprises like that can just make your day. Patience is a virtue a photographer needs. Not every shoot will provide a winning shot, but you don’t really know until the light is gone.

Grand Canyon is a wonderful place for a photographer and has been for more than a century. The colors are fabulous, but the textures and lines and levels give us plenty of opportunities for dramatic black and white images as well. Imagining all the photographers who have come before, so many carting their big 8×10 glass plates around the rim and into the canyon, it’s awesome. It’s worth stopping from time to time, too, just to put the camera down and look. Experience millions of years of evolution of our remarkable little dot of a planet. Wondrous.

Moose and Kevin are terrific teachers. Their understanding of visual perception and ability to impart that knowledge on the students is fabulous. It really doesn’t get much better.

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February 10, 2013

Shadowlands

Filed under: Rochester Civic Theatre — Tony Drumm @ 1:37 pm

Last night I shot show photos for Rochester Civic Theatre’s production of Shadowlands. This tells the story of a middle-aged C.S. Lewis finding love rather unexpectedly. It’s a rather emotional story, and knowing a little about the plot, I was surprised at the humor that finds its way into much of the story.

It’s always interesting to me the choice of color of the lighting and costumes. Those colors can set the mood for the show. Here, there were rather muted colors, lots of browns and dark shades, and there was an overall magenta cast to the lights.

I think the most colorful costumes were those worn by Joy, Lewis’ love interest. It isn’t too hard to understand why, as she brings some color into Lewis’ life.

A golden tree hides in the shadows at the back of the set, lighting up rather unexpectedly during the show. It serves as something of a gateway to other worlds including those of Lewis’ books such as Narnia.

In terms of the photo shoot, actors tended to be more or less together in areas of the large set. That made my job a bit easier. I often have to find some way to include either a large cast (think about big musical numbers) or cast members at the far corners of the stage interacting. Here I had less of that, and I was able to zoom in more and get in close to the players. That’s always nice.

The more challenging aspect of this show was probably the lighting. None of the scenes were brightly lit. Often, there was one or a set of bright lights with an otherwise muted background. This is similar how spotlights affect the shot – lots of contrast. There were a few shots with very low lighting, but I’m able to reasonably deal with that.

After I returned home, I started to wonder how many shows I’ve shot. This show makes 65. I’m beginning to figure it out, I think!

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January 28, 2013

Head Shots

Filed under: Portraits — Tony Drumm @ 6:11 pm

I shot some head shot photos for Rebecca last week. My earlier post showed off one that I did some more extensive post-processing, but here are a few with the lighter hand for an actor’s use. These need to be natural, not over worked. Becca was a great subject. I’ve worked with her a few times before, and I know to expect some great shots.

In this shot, I love how her dark hair frames the right side of her face.

This time, I had difficulty culling them down to a reasonable set for her. She and the camera get along well. This shot is similar to the one I posted before – same lighting and pose.