April has been busy as usual with the bird migration starting, and also two theatrical performances that I shot earlier this month!

Steel Magnolias

First up with Clark State’s production of Steel Magnolias. If you’ve never seen the movie or the play before, its a real tear-jerker! Here’s the Ai-generated story plot:

M'Lynn is the mother of bride-to-be Shelby Eatenton, and as friend Truvy Jones fixes the women's hair for the ceremony, they welcome a helping hand from aspiring beautician Annelle Dupuy Desoto. Diabetic Shelby has a health scare, which is averted but doesn't bode well for her hopes of having children. Time passes, and the women and their friends encounter tragedy and good fortune, growing stronger and closer in the process.

SPOILER ALERT: The “tragedy” is Shelby dying due to her diabetic complications.

The performance I shot took place in the Kuss Auditorium’s smaller Turner Studio venue, where I shot Macbeth last year. The last few times I’ve shot there I’ve wondered if changing up my lens choice would be the way to go since it is so tight. So for this performance I brought my 14-24mm 2.8 lens on one D850 body for the wide shots, and the 24-120mm 4.0 lens on another D850 for everything else. As it turns out, the 24-120 was perfect for almost everything. I’d say about 95% of my images were shot with that, so in the future I may just bring the one camera/lens combo with a back-up in my bag.

Where the 24-120mm lens suffered was in the scene where the lights went off and M’Lynn and Shelby were in the salon in the dark having a heartfelt discussion about her decision to move forward with her pregnancy. It was DARK. Not great for trying to capture images, but I always say that the lighting crew do the lighting for the audience’s enjoyment, and not the guy shooting the dress rehearsal. :)

This shot was at 25,600 ISO @ 1/30th of a second at f/4. Truthfully a faster 2.8 lens might have only given me about 1/2 a stop more light, as I tend to shoot them at 3.2 or 3.5 anyway for better edge sharpness. So that’s not much of a difference anyway. Thankfully Lightroom’s DeNoise feature is pretty incredible, and rescued the image.

I also used Photoshop’s Generative AI fill for several shots of this performance. There were scenes where the edge of the walls ended and showed the outside of the theater, and/or there were distracting elements visible.

Here’s a good example where it really comes in handy.

OK, enough tech babble. Here are a few of my favorites from the show. Click on the first image to enlarge and scroll through them.

CATS: The Musical - Young Actors Edition

CATS was a last-minute ask to shoot the dress rehearsal, as the original photographer had flaked on the cast and crew and I jumped in to save the day. CATS and Steel Magnolias are pretty much polar opposites of each other in terms of plotline, emotions, and pacing.

This was my first time shooting an Ohio Performing Arts Institute (OPAI) production, and I must say I was quite impressed. The costumes were amazing, as were the lights, choreography, actors, and set. This one was a lot of fun to shoot, and tested my ability to basically capture as much as I could. There was so much going on I know I didn’t capture everything, and this could have been one of the shows that would have also benefitted from a second shooter. Unfortunately my second shooter was busy that night and also wasn’t included as part of the deal.

Here are a few of my favorites from the show. There were so many it was hard to choose! Click on the first image to enlarge and scroll through them.