Panto Time

On Monday evening I was away from my studies and taking photos as part of my other hobby, theatre. Under the guise of Stagedoor Photography, I offer free photographic services to local amateur theatre groups, helping them to promote their groups or shows. I've been doing this for 3 years now and regularly get repeat calls from groups wanting me to work with them again. I usually take along another photographer who wants to try their hand at a completely different type of photography and this time I had fellow student Iain Patterson shadowing me.

The group we were working with was Chester-le-Street Theatre Group's Jrs and Grads and they are a group I've worked with a number of times in the past. This shoot was for their panto this year titled "Freezin" which was a cross between "Frozen" and "The Snow Queen" with all the usual slapstick and mayhem.

Shooting a theatrical performance is a totally different experience to anything else I shoot, and it constantly keeps you on your toes. You have to work with constantly changing lighting conditions over which you have no control at all, a subject which rarely stays still long enough to get a good composition and no opportunity to just "do that again". On top of that, the light levels are rarely high enough to get a high shutter speed (125/sec) without using a very high ISO (2500+) with the lens aperture wide open. And you can forget about using a flashgun to help, as all that will do is blind the cast, which they won't thank you for, and destroy all the hard work the lighting technician has put in to create an atmosphere.