Pavilions Theatre in Teignmouth needed some shots of the Dress Rehearsal before the opening night. With a same-day turnaround of the photos, here is how the evening went…
To be getting so many Theatre enquiries again has been bliss! The lockdown felt like forever and to be back doing Theatre photography, including rehearsals, behind the scenes and opening nights has been wonderful!
Pavilions Teignmouth needed some publicity photos to promote the show ‘Shout the Musical‘. I was asked to come in during the final dress rehearsal to capture some shots.
The main show was starting the following day, so a quick turnaround for the photos was needed. Within 3 hours of getting home that evening, I was sending them the edited photos.
Let’s see some examples of the Theatre dress rehearsal photos I supplied that night…
I had to be wary of banding, but also of the purple lighting, which sometimes caused blotches of purple on their faces. The banding was a simple camera set-up change. The purple light was just something I had to workaround. As you see from above, there were no issues with the photos I provided.
The cast was marvellous and they enabled me to get some nice shots. The main difficulty was not trying to dance along with them as I’m taking the photos 😁
I’m not one of those people who are rather snobby who boasts “I only shoot in manual”. Theatre Photography is one of those exceptions where shooting in manual is the only way of making sure your settings are not way off the mark.
Each time I photograph in a Theatre I like to over switch to an auto setting during a quiet moment, just to see what the camera thinks is the perfect settings. It’s incredible how badly wrong it gets it. In manual, I was shooting around 1/500 and ISO 800. In auto, it was going for 1/20 and ISO 12,800 (It wanted 25,000 ISO but I cap mine at 12,800).
I did this with my old camera (I used to shoot Nikon) and it was the same for that camera too. When you combine banding and flickering to the mix, it can be a difficult place to photograph if you’ve never shot anything like it before.
If you need some fast turn-around Theatre Photography please let me know!
Theatre Photography Equipment used:
- 2x Sony A9
- Sony 24mm F1.4 GM
- Sony 85mm F1.4 GM
