On Stage: Community Theatre

[Rachel Foster]

I had the chance to shoot the actors of a local community theatre (Lend Me A Tenor). I had to make do with what stage lighting there was, and had little control over it. Still, I liked the look of this one. Your thoughts on overall quality and flaws I may have missed are welcome. I am pretty sure this is right out of the cam, untouched.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Rachel,

You did well especially considering the difficult lighting of the theater.

Consider adding more black space to the left of the face otherwise it is "closed". Expand the "Canvas size". You can also select the darker areas of the face and apply a curve to lighten things. Or else you might use the shadows highlight tool. The eyes and face can be selectively sharpened.

Thanks for sharing!

Asher

 

[Shane Carter]

I like that you did not blow out the highlights but too much of the face is too dark. Stages lights are often nice and bright so that is not normally a problem...however, they need to be in a spot to make it work. There tends to lots of light fall off outside of the spot...here is an example:

Usually the stage will not set up for bright uniform lighting and frankly it is boring when it is...stage directors know that (less drama for the audience) so it is rare.

This also looks a little soft to me so my quess is either a smidge of motion blur or the AF could not find enough contrast to lock properly.

Set yourself up an angle to the stage to increase the number of shots you can get with more than one player...straight on will reduce your opportunites and keep the set in your shots...unless you are right up close with a WA...here is an example of that:

Rim lighting like you have in your shot can be effective, just look for opportunies when you can use it for framing and increase context...here is an example of that...

Hope this was good food for thought, have fun and keep shooting and sharing!