Packing my bags for tomorrow's technical rehearsal of Terence McNally's, "The Immortal Longings."

Photographed as an audition for Jana. I needed a great talent to pose for lots of the images in my LED book so I booked a session with Jana and we played around all over downtown but especially in Little City Coffee House. It's no longer there but I still have the photographs. 

The photographs of Jana have nothing to do with the written content of this particular blog post but I like them and thought they should get some exposure. Beautiful woman --- coffee. What's not to like? 

But really I just wanted to write about what I'm packing to take to the technical rehearsal of a new play that's about Diagilev and Najinsky, their relationship, and the revolution they created together in modern ballet. Our theater is hosting the world premiere of Terence McNally's (Four time Tony award winner, writer of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and "Ragtime") newest play, "The Immortal Longings." 

There are two different rehearsals during which I make photographs. One is the full dress rehearsal (coming up on Tuesday) and the other is the final technical rehearsal. The dress rehearsals usually have a "family and friends" audience which limits my ability to move all over the house to get all kinds of fun angles I like but the tech rehearsal is done without an audience and gives me full license to be everywhere I want to be except on the stage itself (too dangerous and distracting). The photographs I take are used in advertising and public relations, and appear all over Austin and as far away as "American Theater Magazine" and most recently in the "New York Times." 

My gear inventory is simple and straight forward for tomorrow. I'm taking two Fuji X-H1 bodies and one X-T3 body. I'll put the 50-140mm f2.8 lens on one X-H1 and the 16-55mm f2.8 on the other body and use both of them handheld. For the first time since I started shooting theater I am planning to put the 8-16mm lens (at 10mm) on the X-T3, place it on a tripod right at stage level, center; pointing up a bit, and trigger it with a remote release. I'll pre-focus at 15 feet and try to compute a good average exposure level for the spotlights on stage. I just thought I'd try something new and different (for me). 

I must confess that I do miss the days of yore when we would do staged shots for marketing instead of trying to catch our photographs during run of show. I'd drag in multiple strobe boxes and many flash heads with soft boxes, and some with grids, up onto the stage and we'd shoot Polaroids and do a bit of collaboration with the marketing team. It was fun and we never had to worry about "file noise" or things not being sharp because of shutter speed limitations. It was time consuming and hard labor but the photos never looked better. 

Seems strange, all of a sudden, not to be heading to San Antonio in the morning. I'm already missing having lunch the memory care facility with my dad and his two favorite table mates, Marianne and Jimmy. But at least I won't be racing back to Austin in a sweat trying to make it to the theater on time after lingering too long in the afternoon, reading the New York Times to my dad.... and sneaking him small bags of Hershey's Kisses. 

Waiting to meet someone who is perennially late, or unreliable.