We were asked to photograph at a fundraising event last night for the Coronado Performing Arts Center to give participating couples a memento of their evening in this historic theater in the heart of Rockford’s RiverDistrict. The tough part of this shoot was that we were hoping to show people in the setting of the theater itself, but the theater is massive, and everyone was on stage looking out to the house. To give you just an idea of how big this place is, and how great it looks from the audience point-of-view, here is a shot I took from the balcony that night:
A long shot view at 18mm of the theater from the balcony. Note that this is a 30 second exposure at f/11 at ISO100, so the lighting level is much lower than it appears.
Now, we were limited by a few things here. First off, the best view is from the seats looking towards the stage. But, we were limited to shooting from the stage where everyone was gathered for dinner, drinks & entertainment. Lastly, not only is this place huge, but it was lit very dramatically, and very low, so exposure was going to be a real challenge. Here’s a test composition of our assistant Aaron Spain, standing in where I though we could get couples posed with the theater behind them:
Here's our test exposure shot for ambient light at the Coronando Theater. Even at ISO400, we were only getting 1/2s @ f/8
As with everything in photography, it’s all about trade-offs. As you can see from the photo above, in-camera metering indicated that we needed 1/2s @f/8 at ISO400. And the theater itself still looked like a cave. Oy. Enter real studio lighting on location. Armed with a couple of Bowens packs – a QuaDX 3000 and the battery powered Explorer 1500, plus a few heads, we were able to quickly light both the subject area, as well as augment the ambient light in the theater to be as natural looking as possible. I actually think we did a pretty good job with it:
A cute young couple posing for a snap with the Coronado theater as a background.
Now, I could have shot these at say f/2.8-f/4 to gain 2-3 stops in the ambient range or shutter speed, but then we would have run into several other trade-offs. Depth-of-field would have been diminished, and subsequently the theater would have appeared more blurry and abstract. The Bowens Softlite beauty dish reflector we had boomed over the P.A. system was already about 3 meters away, and even at the lowest power setting of 30w/s I had to add a -2 stop ND gel to it to get it down to f/8. As a point of reference, the two background lights we used were pumping out 3,000w/s just to get the background of the theater to register on the camera sensor.
Other than the fact that we were a bit constrained by the place we were allowed to shoot from, I do wish we had been able to get the guests up on the band stand as opposed to in front of it. It would have been less distracting, raised them in relation to the high theater background, providing for a stronger composition.
The other trade-off of the exposure combination of f/8 for the flash, and 1/2s for the ambient was subject movement. Some folks just didn’t hold still, and so we got a few blurry shots. Of course, flash freezes their movement, but the longer exposure to pick up the ambient background was also lighting the subjects.
Okay, so I just got a gibe about how if one does capture in color with a digital camera, that it still cannot match the quality, tonal range or beauty of B&W film. Once again, I say poppycock! Let’s have a look.
My friend Jim Moore needed a quick shot after hours for a FOID card that he was renewing. As it was too late to go to one of the photo stores’ passport photo setups, he gave me a call, and I obliged. Now, Jim doesn’t like mussing about, so I got to squeeze off exactly two frames before he was bored, and luckily I got not only a pleasant shot he could use for his FOID card, but this one as well. I think he actually likes this one more, as it makes him look tougher than even Clint Eastwood. The problem with that of course, is it doesn’t look nearly as intimidating in color as it does in B&W, so in less than 5 minutes in Lightroom, and I had this result:
A side-by-side comparison of the original in both color and B&W as seen in the Develop module of Lightroom.
The shot setup was as simple as it can get for a 5 minute prep time in the studio: Our stock Thunder Grey seamless, a single Bowens QuaDX head with 15″ Bowens Softlite reflector (a beauty dish + counter reflector) on a Bowens QuaDX 3000 power pack. The exposure was metered at f/11 for ISO100.
Many people ask me just how I get such rich results from Lightroom for my B&W conversions. I won’t be modest here, but 25 years’ experience in the darkroom really helps. I guess I’m lucky to have learned the old way before it was too late, but there are few experiences in the world that compare to pulling prints on graded paper under a cold light in a traditional wet darkroom. After years and years of having to be patient overnight just to see one’s dry-down results, and after awhile you get a knack for it. But just in case you’re wondering where I start, I’ve saved the little recipe I used here for you to play with in Lightroom on your own:
And, here is a more detailed result of the above preset:
Detailed output of the Lightroom settings described above.