All the World's a Stage

I received an e-mail from a fellow KPA member, Jeff, asking if I would like to participate on a photo shoot at local Dinner Theater.  The theme was based on Cirque de Soleil and the model, a gymnast, would have her body painted and adorned with twigs and dried moss.  This sounded like a real creative shoot and working with a body painter and a gymnast has been on my photography "Bucket List" for quite some time.

Although we were shooting indoors, I brought my studio equipment and my "on location" gear just so we had enough lights and modifiers.  Jeff had already planned out some images he wanted to capture and how he wanted them lit.  He also mentioned that we would have access to the theater lighting if needed.  I shot at the Dinner Theater back in May of 2009, but stayed in the Dining Area to photograph Samantha.  This time we would be using the entire stage, or so we thought.  Apparently the Dinner Theater is putting on a production of play, titled Deathtrap and so the stage was cluttered with props and the set.

After testing the theater lights we decided to simulate our own theater lighting. The image above, with the model in front of the curtains was done with three lights.  The key was an Alien Bee 1600 with an 8.5" reflector metered at f/4 and 30 degree grid.  The rim /accent light is an Einstein 640 with a blue gel and barndoors metered at f/8 and the background light is a White Lighting 800 with barndoors skimmed off the curtains metered at f/5.6 to provide some detail.

Honestly I struggled during this shoot, too, specifically due to the limited  amount of space on the stage, we really had to shoot tight and the electro-magnetic interference created by the Einsteins rendered my Pocket Wizards unreliable.

After we completed the low-key shots, Jeff set-up his high-key equipment.  These shots were done with two Einsteins, metered at f/11, pointed at the White Seamless paper and a White Lighting in a 40"+ octagonal softbox camera left 45 degrees and metered at f/8.  This set-up is based on Zack Arias' configuration.  the set-up is very inexpensive and provides some great results.

Again, a challenging shoot, but still an excellent exercise in planning and being flexible.  thanks Jeff for the invite, I hope you got the shots you needed for Kristin.

Huge Shout Outs to:

• Kristin Rene' "Triple Threat" she did hair, make-up and the body paint.  
• Tarin for being the awesome model on her first gig
• Jeff for putting together a very well-conceived and executed session

I have a shoot scheduled for October 9 with an experienced model who is also a Make-up Artist and "No" it isn't Darnah.   Until then, "That's A Wrap!!!"