Spent last weekend shooting shows at the first ever San Diego Fringe Festival. Posted about it a while back when I signed on as one of their sponsoring photographers and did a commercial shoot for their promo use. That shoot leads to the really cool awesomeness I discovered as I was looking through the show schedules, on June 28th the San Diego Union Tribune Theater section did a spread on Fringe, and one of my pics was the cover photo. So I even though they got the shot from Fringe and didn't credit me, I have now been published in the SD Union Trib! That was a super bonus.
I first got involved with Fringe in New Orleans, when I was working with the Whirly Bones Variety Arts Collective. It was a blast and I also got to see a lot of really amazing shows. I was totally stoked when I found out Fringe was coming to San Diego and definitely wanted to be involved. Plus, multiple shows running on multiple stages back to back packed over a week is an awesome laboratory for a performance photographer. Figured I would get lots and lots of practice as well as the chance for some good exposure and networking. Of course, I wound up getting a lot less shooting time than I initially hoped for thanks to some unplanned travel for the Navy, but I did manage to get in two days of Fringy goodness.
I was able to capture a lot of great shots, you can see them all here and I got to learn a few things and hone some techniques a bit. I got to really work both the 24-70 and the 70-200. The Dance shows were challenging because I had not seen the dances before and in most cases I wasn't familiar with the music either. Due to good audience turnout I was also forced to shoot from the side, far downstage right, so a lot of the time I was at a bad angle to really catch what was going on. Sometimes the angle helped, but mostly it hurt.
It was better during the day on Friday when I had a bit more freedom to move around, but I can really see the advantage of trying to shoot a full dress run rehearsal rather than an actual show anytime that option is open to me. But not knowing what was coming forced me to change my shooting style. I had been in the rookie habit of looking only through the viewfinder and pretty much closing my second eye. Therefore if I didn't see it in the viewfinder I didn't know it was happening. This is pretty much the way everyone learns to shoot, but most pros, especially sports or journalism photographers, learn to keep the second eye open so they are more aware of what is going on all around them. I have worked on this a bit before, but never to the extent I did this weekend. Shooting horizontal, shooting vertical, camera to left eye, camera to right eye, trying to catch all the action. I won't say I have mastered the art yet, but I can say that by the last show Sunday night I sure a heck was a lot better at it and much more fluid than I was when I started Friday morning.
Another lesson I (re)learned was ALWAYS CHECK YOUR SETTINGS BEFORE YOU START TO SHOOT!!!!! No, I am not screaming at you, I am screaming at me in the hopes that one of these days it will stick. I totally forgot that I had dialed in -1.7ev for one of the HDR frames I shot before the fireworks show. Apparently I never took that setting out, and didn't notice during the fireworks shooting since the exposures were all so long anyway. But it took me until the middle of the third show I shot to finally figure out why everything was coming out so dark. The first shows were in low lighting anyway for the most part, nothing Excalibur couldn't cope with (thank goodness, even with the -1.7stop compensation all the shots were still useable) but since the lighting was dark anyway it never occurred to me that my shots were coming out darker for a different reason. I noticed the shots were noisier than Excalibur generally provides, but my rationalization was that it was because I was bumping up the shutter speed to make sure I was freezing the kicks and leaps of some very high energy dance numbers. Luckily the third show was in an open space with a lot of natural light coming through the skylights, so when those shots were all looking too dark I realized something was up. So- bottom line- listen to that little voice when it notices your gear isn't working quite like you expect it to. Your gear may be broken, but it also may be some simple oversight in the setting department. You can have the best gear in the universe, but it you don't use it right, it won't perform. Lucky for me Excalibur was able to make up for my error in this case. But if you look at the "Multiple Exposures" (ah, yes, I did love shooting that show, perfectly named for photography- I was tempted to play with the multiple exposure capabilities of the D4, but didn't want to miss anything) gallery, all of those were shot at -1.7ev dialed in, so had to use a bit more aggressive noise reduction in post. But I did get to work with some really fun lighting situations throughout the weekend.
The other thing I learned was that although the camera can be a great insulator to keep the photographer separated and apart from what you are shooting, sometimes it isn't enough and it's very difficult to shoot when something brings you to tears. One of the shows was a dark, Tim Burton style tragicomedy called Oyster Boy- the story of a couple who conceive right after a strange dinner and wind up with a very deformed son with an oyster shell head. They are shunned by the community and the (spoiler alert) Oyster boy dies in an old school Little Mermaid style and returns to the sea. This show was really well done, lots of people in the audience were laughing and crying at the same time, but this show really touched me on a deep level. Those who have been following the blog for a while (both of you) and those who know me, know that the namesake of the business is my son, who recently celebrated his first birthday. One of my earliest memories from childhood was one of my playmates dying of lukemia. Another one of the family friends had a disabled son that was a frequent playmate. As a naval officer, I have had several people I work with who have had special needs children. I recently learned one of my former Chiefs' daughter passed away after a far too short life in a wheelchair. Honestly, I don't know how they do it. Being a parent is terrifying enough for me. I wasn't sure I was ready to be a father at all, I still am not sure most of the time. But I was terrified of having something not being normal. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a religious person. Religion screwed up my life badly enough that I am just now starting to feel like I have recovered from it. Me and god aren't exactly on the best of terms. But for nine months, I was praying to every different power I could think of that my little dragon would be healthy. So far all seems normal and good, and I cannot believe how thankful I am for that. It's hard enough being a parent for a healthy toddler, I put those parents who deal with challenges I hope to never know in the same category I put firefighters and my other heroes. I admire their strength and courage, and while I hope I would find the same capabilities in me if the need arose, I thank the universe ever day that I haven't had to test that theory and beg to keep things that way. Anyway, serious props to the cast of Oyster Boy, who was able to infuse a puppet with enough life to rip into the deepest fears of my soul and make me laugh through the tears. At least the tears were on the viewfinder side of the camera and not the lens side, so they didn't screw up the shots.
Finally, I learned that one person shows are particularly challenging. Just shooting one person taking up a stage for 30-45 minutes or longer.... it's hard to stay focused on the shooting, and hard to continue to try and find different images and ways to shoot the same person doing basically the same thing over that span of time. But losing focus for an instant could mean missing the key shot. I definitely missed a few, but I did catch come good moments.
Fringe was a wonderful experience, glad I got to catch more of it that I thought I was going to be able to given my last minute orders from the Navy, looking forward to being more involved next year!
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