Photos from the dress rehearsal of, "The Great Society." The second interesting play about LBJ's legacy. We're three cameras deep in this one....

A photograph from Zach Theatre's, "The Great Society." 

As you might know I've spent quality time over the last 28 years documenting almost every single production Zach Theatre has done in that span. I've used at least 30 different cameras and hundreds of different lenses and I've enjoyed watching somewhere between 350-450 performances. I know a lot about theater, I just don't know what I like... Just kidding. I know exactly what I like.

I like plays that challenge my view of life, make me laugh, make me cry, etc. But most of all I like plays that are fun to shoot. That doesn't always mean comedies or musicals; it means any play that is well staged, beautifully lit, powerfully acted and, in some way accessible to me. Having literally photographed thousands of hours of material (both content on the stage and set-up advertising shots in the my studio, or a temporary studio at Zach Theatre; on the stages at Live Oak Theatre, The Paramount Theater, the State Theater, The Rollins Stage at the Long Center, and the rehearsal stage at the Austin Lyric Opera) I think I finally know a thing or two about how to photograph plays and operas, and just how my photographs will be used. The photographs I share here on my blog are not necessarily the ones I, or the marketing people from the theaters, think are the perfect ones to use for mass market communications, they are the ones I like from the shows --- for one reason or another. 

You would think that, over time, I would become a bit jaded and, more or less, just photograph productions on auto pilot by now but you would be wrong. This year I decided I needed to up my game a bit, mostly for my own enjoyment and for the challenge of making better works. A constant push for me and for my clients, and especially for the actors who commit so much time and energy to make their art work.

To this end I've started going to rehearsals and digging into the look and feel of the content while trying to better understand what the artistic directors are trying to do in their interpretations of the material. 

For "The Great Society" ( a drama about the second term of LBJ's presidency) I started my research by going to an early rehearsal and mostly watching the blocking while reading over the script. I came back a week later and we set up some lighting and used an a6300 to record three video interviews with key actors. About a week before the design rehearsal (the first rehearsal with full costumes and fully finished sets) I came by just to sit for a while and look at the set on the stage. It was also a nice chance to talk with the lighting designer for the play and try to understand the way she would use lighting to help drive the drama. 

I came to the design rehearsal which pretty much gave me the run of the house for photographs. This is where I got a lot of the closer, wider shots which I like very much. It was also the first time I was able to see a production run all the way through the script. It's great to know where the action builds and when there might be "reveals" that are important. This play is in three acts with two intermissions so there is a lot of action to remember and to prepare for. 

For the design rehearsal I brought along "the twins." The RX10ii and the RX10iii. Don't know why I did it that way but I liked it. A lot. I used the 2 for most of the close stuff and

Workflow from last night's shoot.

I shot on three different cameras last night. I was testing the limits of the RX10iii and keeping the A7Rii + 70-200mm f4.0G close at hand to shoot vital group shots that are so popular for theater marketing. Then I filled in around the edges with the Sony a6300 and its companion, the 18-105mm G lens. The photographing was a straightforward as I could make it. I shot raw not so much for post shooting color correction but in order to lift the shadows and have fine control over the noise reduction settings. As usual, I shot too much but I have been working on "speed-editing" so the final count for post processed files was a little over 500, which meant I had achieved a 3-to-1 reduction in files shot versus files finished out. 

I've been getting more mercenary as the size of the raw files continues to grown. I flagged all the images I think are best, select the flagged images in Lightroom and then inverse the selection and throw away all the non-flagged photographs. And when I say "throw away" I mean that when the little box comes up and asks me if I just want to "remove" the images from the catalog or if I really mean I want to delete them from the hard drive I summon up my courage and dump them. It's actually a nice feeling to see the file folders shrink in size. 

After I ingest everything into Lightroom and do my edit (which means "keep or throw") I then go to the files that survived and start to post process ( which means to color correct, enhance, crop, sharpen, etc.).

I work from the top down in the menu system. I start with color, move on to exposure then onto shadow and highlight protection and so on. I shoot a bit on the dark side so I'm generally adding +35 to +50 to each file. In situations where my main subject is in spotlight and the rest of the cast or background is darker I routinely pull the shadow slider up to 50-70% to get some detail in there. There is a certain balance between the exposure setting and the shadow and highlight settings. If I have time I work the relationships a bit to find an optimized combination. 

I shoot in single frame burst of 10-12 shots without changing camera settings so if I like a series of images I need only work the first one diligently and then the rest are sync'd to the first file. 

Moving further down the menu we get to sharpening and noise reduction. Depending on the lens in use I might need no sharpening and usually just a small amount if I do need to add some. I like big percentages as small radii. I'm equally conservative with noise reduction because I want to see detail everywhere. +20 is generally the sweet spot for images shot just above the ISO comfort level (for instance, ISO 4,000 for the A7Rii or ISO 1250 for the RX10iii...). 

Once I get everything applied the way I want it I select all the files and output them into a folder as low compression (92%) Jpegs and I fix the image size at 6000 pixels wide for the theater. Too much bigger and it slows everything down, too much smaller and I get nervous about posters and print magazines. I do have a close working relationship with the in-house art director so if she is making huge lobby posters I'll go back to the files and output her selections at the full file size. 

Once I have all the images output they get uploaded to Smugmug.com. Today's upload of Jpegs was just under 6GB. Once they are on Smugmug I set the gallery controls accordingly. With the Theater I want to make sure everyone on the marketing team has access to what they need so I make the files individually downloadable if the person has the password. In this way they can share the gallery with the actors and crew but have control over what ultimately gets downloaded. Smugmug makes it easy for me to select an entire gallery and send downloadable (and expiring) links to clients who need access to all the high res files. Doing this saves me the cost of a memory stick and a trip in the car. 

With a non-profit client like Zach Theatre social media can really make or break goals for ticket sales so we allow the principal actors access to the images for Facebook and Twitter, etc. We might lose some individual sales but actors generally don't have much budget to buy production stills and if we didn't allow social media use we might win the battle (short term, small income) but lose the war (sustaining productions with marketing allowing us all to continue to work together and get paid). 

Uploading to Smugmug also gives me one more place to archive files. At $150 a year for unlimited storage, and convenient retrieval as well as display, the service is a bargain. I have the files on at least one hard drive and generally write them also to a DVD (I know, old school). Then I send along a bill and I'm done. Just thought I'd share my process. Everyone has a different way of doing this work.

RX10iii at near full lens extension.

I like the way 135mm lens, on full frame cameras, cropped to squares, looks. It's a mix.

For a while now I've been talking about shooting portraits in a square format. Many have commented that they routinely shoot stuff in a 3:2 aspect ratio with the intention of later cropping to square. I had trouble getting my brain around post partum cropping because I was concerned about not composing correctly or, not having enough resolution with the outer (vestigial) wings cut off. I recently put a cheap, plastic protective cover over the rear monitor screen of my A7Rii and marked off the cropped square with a black Sharpie. Now I have permanent square frame lines. Oh joy! I'm also happy to know that I still have nearly 24 megapixels of image resolution left after the crop. Now I can breathe a sigh of relief and start making portraits the way I like them again. 

The final piece of the puzzle for me was to find the right focal length to complement the square and the way I like portraits to look. Historically, the images I liked best all came from about 135mm of focal length. To that end I've been using the Rokinon 135mm t2.2 cine lens as my primary, square lens.  It gives me the compression that I like and, when used near the close focusing limits and the aperture range of f2.2-f4.0 it gives me the kind of quick focusing ramp that helps to isolate faces in a charming way.  

I always know when my brain agrees with my heart because I start begging my friends and colleagues to come over to the studio for a little portrait sitting. I've been on a roll lately. 

The image above is the color file that corresponds to the black and white image I showed about a week ago. We aren't in my studio but in a airy space at the Topfer Theatre on the Zach Theatre campus. I used the lens to make this image of Rebecca and, previously, images of Jack Donahue. Now that I finally have some free time to post process I am very happy with the choices I made. 

It's nice to find that sweet spot you have been missing...

Welcome Back to the Visual Science Lab Blog. I Missed My Daily Keyboard Exercise. My Mind Got Flabby Too.

Selfie in a mirrored window. 

I wish I could say I got a lot done during my almost month long Summer vacation but the truth is that I spent most of it swimming, running, hanging with my (incredible) kid and going out to our family's favorite restaurants. I read four or five novels, watched movies and even spent some time meditating. I'd like to say that I am now relaxed and mellow but the truth is I'm no more or less cynical and opinionated than when I last hit the keyboard. And not much more relaxed than at any other time. Only now I am a month behind...

To get everyone up to speed I have to say that I did not buy any new cameras or lenses during my hiatus. I'm still working with the Sony cameras and I'm still finding the various strengths from model to model. Current favorite combinations include using the a6300 with the older Olympus 60mm f1.5 lens. Mix in focus peaking and focus magnification and the lens just becomes twenty years better and sharper. It's as good as anything I can buy new today. If you find one of these lenses in good shape be sure to grab it. Better still if it's cheap!

I am having fun shooting the A7ii as though it was a 1970's SLR. I toss a manual focus 50mm lens on the front and I am more or less transported back to 1978, only with an EVF and a bunch of information in the finder. Oh, and no film to buy and soup. It's like the cameras we all used to wear to school every day, just in case we ended up meeting a very, very cute woman on the way to or from class and she needed to have her portrait made. It's small, discrete and mellow. Kinda like a Nikon FM. Or an Olympus OM-1.

The camera that gets most of my attention is still the Sony RX10iii. It's so fantastic that I try to use it for everything. If I ever perfect a PhotoShop methodology for getting a narrow depth of field look with that camera then everything else goes off to the consignment shelf at the store and we pick up an extra RX10iii as a back up. With that one exception (shallow depth of field) it is the ultimate working camera for me. Too bad the A7ii is more fun (ergonomically) to carry around, and comes stock with the kind of depth of field control that is in fashion and addictive. 

The odd man out of the whole collection seems to be that poor A7Rii which sits alone in a drawer, in a neoprene pouch, waiting for the next, big paying job to roll around. Don't get me wrong, the camera is pretty amazing. Files are beautiful whether you are shooting stills or video, but unless you're working on a massive print project, or need very clean high ISOs, the A7ii works just fine, is less dear to lose or damage, and gives me a good compromise between file size and "ultimate" image quality. 

Of the three subsets of Sony that I own the a6300 and a6000 are the least necessary to me. I like using the old Olympus lenses, or the new Sigma 30mm f1.4 DN, on them and pretending I'm shooting with an old Leica but my brain always reaches for the RX10iii or the A7ii well before any of the APS-C, mirrorless Sonys. 

In other news: My world class assistant for the Summer (Ben) is packing up and heading back to school in New York this week. He hits the Austin airport early Saturday morning and I already miss him. So much so that I've already got airline tickets and hotel reservations so his mom and I can head up and visit in October. The member of the family who will be most devastated by his leaving will be Studio Dog. She'll mope around for weeks. She loves to torture me in the times after Ben goes back to school by walking down the hall in front of me, as we head out for a walk, and stopping in front of Ben's room and looking it over. Then she turns her head towards me and makes the world's saddest dog eyes. It's just pathetic. And no matter what I have scheduled I stop and play with her for the next half hour. 

During the break I've spent some quality time learning more and more about microphones, their placement and their pre-amps. I've picked up some extra microphones and now, officially, have more than I need for anything short of a TV quiz show production. I'll talk about them in the near future...

Finally, my goal for the Fall is to start every blog post with a new portrait. If no one is around to collaborate with you'll either get a new self portrait or another stunning image of Studio Dog. Since I have no immediate interest in adding to my camera inventory we may just have to go crazy and talk about actual photographs. Welcome back! Happy coffee. 

Dog cooling butt on a hot afternoon.

My favorite view from Town Lake

Dog piloting boat while human enters self-induced cellphone coma.

Preparing to dock. 

A quick tech note about the bottom four photographs in this blog: They were all done with the Sony RX10iii. The first one, of the sitting dog, was done at some intermediate focal length but the wide shot of the Lamar Bridge was done at the widest focal length (24mm equiv.) while the bottom two were done from hundreds of yards away with the fully extended 600mm focal length. I am consistently amazed at the performance of that lens and sensor combination. Just amazed. 

A favorite, quirky image from the Zach production of "One Man, Two Guvners."

Ahhh. Settling in with a great stage shooting combination. The Sony A7Rii and the 70-200mm f4.0 OSS lens. The camera is quiet silent and the files that emerge from it as 18 megapixel Jpegs are noise free at nearly every ISO. The images are sharp, detailed and nicely colored.  The lens is equally silent and convincingly sharp at its fastest aperture. Add to this the five axis image stabilizations that combines the stabilization of the lens with the stabilization in the body and you've got a rock solid platform to shoot with in any theatre environment. Need more reach? Put the camera in the 42 megapixel mode and then selection "APS-C" as your working crop. Now you've got an extra 100mm of reach with the same resolution you had in the first place (more or less).

I supplement this with the a6300 for the wide end and I'm totally happy. And it all fits nicely into my smallest, Husky tool bag ---- you know, the one I bought for $19. A warm sense of satisfaction just settled over me......of course, it could just be the jalapeños from my breakfast taco....