April 22: Everything Old Is New Again

Happy birthday, Shakespeare – the Bard turns a staggering 455 years old this week!

In honor of the special occasion and because many of my recent shoots have involved familiar people and places, I’ve decided to focus this week’s blog entry on a return to the past – not just 455 years ago, but one year ago, too! In the spring of 2018, I interned at Shakespeare & Company, a theatre company in Lenox that performs modern adaptations of Shakespearean plays.

The shows they put on rotate each spring and summer, but last year’s featured shows on the Northeast Regional Tour were A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Othello. Funnily enough, I photographed Midsummer three times in full – and became a part of the show during one performance! – whereas I only photographed about 20 minutes of Othello.

Although the tour shows were my primary responsibility photography-wise, I got to do a variety of behind-the-scenes shots for the season playbill and social media as well.

The tour cast were so fun to work and live with!

My job wasn’t strictly photography; it was a combination of graphic design, social media, photography/videography, and assorted Development tasks. Overall, Shakespeare & Company was a fantastic place to be.

In other recent non-Shakespeare news, my photo activity lately has been a mixture of new theatre and sports from old stomping grounds. (I won’t focus on the sports stuff in this post, though, for thematic consistency.) WAM, one of my local theatre clients from last year, recently onboarded a few new people into their growing staff, and they hired me to take those new headshots, something I did for their staff last August as well.

Last year’s photos, like the one above, involved natural light, one umbrella for the overhead window, and one reflective white board, per their request. This year, however, we were able to play around a bit. Notice how Kristen’s face below has a golden tint? We used a golden reflector – but a bit differently than you might expect. To save time, we didn’t unload a light stand and set it up there – we simply had a tall WAMmer stand near the subject and wear the reflector material like a hood!

WAM also recently hired me to shoot the press rehearsal shots for their new show Lady Randy, which is currently playing at Shakespeare and Company as well. 

This, too, was a return to the past: the rehearsal room itself was a room from Shake & Co that I’ve shot in many times before. In the right conditions – aka, when you bring your own lighting – it can be a very useful photography space; one of my favorite portrait sessions last year came from this room. (This session was especially meaningful, in fact, because it was the last one Andy did before shaving off all of that hair for his acclaimed Off-Broadway role as Renton in Trainspotting!)

Still, it’s definitely not ideal – the lighting is sparse and the walls are bare and inconsistently colored. I made it work, though – look at this spread from The Berkshire Eagle on Thursday! 

Later this week, I’ll be back to another old stomping ground, Boston, to do a few more publicity shoots on Earth Day for a new volunteer arts client, and I’ll be doing a few photo shoots with old friends as well. Watch this space for new work!



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