Lanie had an ensemble role in this year’s school musical – Big Fish. She had seven costumes and 14 costume changes, including appearing three times as a mermaid. I admit I’ve not tried to spot/count all the costumes and their various appearances.
As we’ve come to expect, the musical was excellent. The cast, crew, and musicians did a wonderful job. The lighting appeared to be more challenging (darker) than in other recent shows, and I wish wearing hats on stage was banned, as the resulting shadows are impossible to avoid. However, these technical issues are purely my own, based on trying to take pictures. The show was really good and I enjoyed it no-end. We enjoyed it so much, that after watching Saturday’s Matinee we rented the movie to see what the differences were.
These pictures are taken from the opening night, which also marks the first forage into the theater for my Fujifilm X-E2s camera. I remain very pleased with the Fuji, and it has the added bonus of being completely silent. I am impressed.
Regardless of the camera, shooting live theater isn’t easy. I’m just a dad, sitting in the theater, hand-holding the camera trying to take pictures in the dark. It doesn’t help that you’ve no clue of where the cast is going to move to next, and what the lighting technician is (or isn’t) going to do. There’s a lot of spray and pray involved. I do wish that Fuji would allow you to change the color of the framing graticule – and also provide an edge graticule. In the dark, it is often hard to determine if the image edge is dark or if you’ve cut something off.
Processing the pictures is a big job. I could limit myself to just taking pictures of Lanie. But, taking pictures of as much of the show as possible is one way in which I can contribute something. I want all the kids to have a chance of a decent memento of their time on stage, should they want them.
