The Man of La Mancha - Character Portraits
It's the end of era for me. This fantastic show, directed by Troy Nickerson, was the last show at The Modern-Spokane for which I captured portraits. The themes and settings of the show and the "look" that Troy was going for lent itself to dark and brooding imagery.
Perfect!
None of my character portrait shoots would succeed without the super-talented actors that sit for me. Posing for a still image and creating a character on-stage are completely different skills and some folks are better at it than others. Most of this cast has sat for me before so they know what I expect but I couldn't have been more pleased with how this shoot started off ... and ended up.
First up was Emily Jones as The Housekeeper! I'm not kidding, within the first 4 or 5 shots, I knew that she had already nailed the look we we were going for. A few of the other actors waiting for their turns watched this happen and they knew that they had a high bar set for them. I took a few more of Emily to be safe but she did great on all of them. She's a champ!
The lighting setup for these images was more simple than most. I had one diffused strobe off to the subject's left side about 3 feet away and a simple reflector off to their right. It was really that stark, contrast-rich look was perfect for the piece. Troy wasn't trying to rewrite Cervantes' story. He simply updated some of the visuals of it by bringing it to a modern day prison filled with modern day thieves and cutthroats. Darker, more brooding and with darker souls.
By the finished product, you'd never know that these were some of the nicest folks you'd ever meet. I couldn't have been more pleased to have worked with them. I know that my imagery doesn't affect the quality of the work on stage. The very best that I can hope for is to inspire the actors to more completely embrace their characters and to have the patrons get an idea of the mood or feeling of the play that they'll be seeing soon.
I hope I've succeeded!
You can see more of my Character Portraits HERE!