Experiment #1 - Theatre Photography

I have a bit of a experience doing theatre photography in a very amateur environment. I'm a member of Oswestry Musical Theatre Company and have got some great pictures of our shows during dress/technical rehearsals (see photos from our "The Secret Garden" performance), but some good photos from a professional show would just be a great experience. There is an definite skill to taking good photos in a theatre environment!

I was in the Apollo Victoria theatre recently watching Wicked. As I was watching i was bemoaning the fact that we had wonderful seats and a great view, but couldn't do anything about taking photos. As I watched the show unfold, too many beautiful potential shots passed me by and I couldn't resist any more. My camera was easily accessible and is always set to use no flash anyhow. I got these shots from row B, right hand side of the seating (to stage left)


The camera was set to use the centre (spot) of the image as the light meter, ISO 400, auto shutter and aperture. As I was taking photos from my chest I couldn't really get a good view of what was going on but it felt right. It was the only one of these that I tried to get, and blow me it worked. It worked amazingly. The blacks are black, there's virtually no noise even at a relatively high ISO and the details are clear.
Again, ISO 400, auto focus, aperture and shutter. She conveniently stayed very still at this point and I got a few, this one turned out by far the best. I'm not as pleased with this as the first shot but it's still turned out very well, with not too much noise in the blacks and a nice contrast between the light of her costume and the red of the flowers on the front of the stage.

This was taken during a chorus/ensemble scene and the costumes were so vibrant I couldn't resist. The photo above has been cropped to get rid of some extraneous clutter in the original, but other than that is unedited.

I would have loved to have taken more pictures, but I think the person I was sat next to took umbrage at my sneaky shot taking and positioned themselves very awkwardly after the interval, meaning I couldn't move very much to get the camera positioned right.

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