Teignmouth Players asked me to come to their dress rehearsal to take photos to use for promotional material. With a turn-around of just two hours for the start of delivery, let’s look at how the performance went and how I was a benefit to the show and cast…

I truly LOVE dress rehearsals at Theatres. I enjoy freely walking around the stalls and being able to take photos from any angle I know would make a good photo. The Ice Factory Studio Theatre in Teignmouth is a really unusual theatre because there is no elevated ‘stage’ as such. The 50 seats for the audience are on the same floor as the space of the performance. Those in the front row could reach out and touch the cast, you are that close to the performance.

This gives the Ice Factory Studio Theatre a really intimate feel.

Having a Royal Variety show this close to where you’re sat really immerses you into the show. You can’t go wrong with a show with songs, sketches, comedy, and magic. This is a wonderfully enjoyable show and I was really happy I could offer my Theatre Photography services once again to the Teignmouth Players.

There are only two days left for this show.
You can buy the tickets here!

Let’s look at some of the photos I supplied just two hours after the show ended:

Theatre Photography Talk

Because this Theatre is so intimate, careful thought has to be given to what choices of camera and lenses I use.

I tend to work with two different cameras now; the Sony A9 and the Sony A7IV. The Sony A9 is excellent with banding issues, but not so good with flickering. The Sony A7IV on the other hand is excellent at Flickering, but not so good with banding. I find that using dual cameras and these two cameras, in particular, give me the best chances of fixing the most common issues faced with modern lights and LED lighting.

The lighting people did an AMAZING job for this performance. Even in-camera, the skin tones looked amazing. Most of the photos above have had little to no post-production.

As I’ve said before, I tend to shoot Weddings with my own custom version of aperture priority. For Theatre work, it has to be manual, unless you want maxed out ISO and super slow shutter speeds. For the most part I was 1/500, f2 and ISO around 800. Being able to see the exposure in-camera makes Theatre work so much easier than chimping all evening as the lights change.

Theatre Photography Camera Equipment

For this show I used:

• Sony A9
• Sony A7IV
• Sony 85mm f1.4 GM
• Sony 24mm f1.4 GM
• Sony 20mm f1.8G

If you need a Theatre Photographer please get in touch!