Theatre Photography in London and the South West

This autumn has been an unusually busy period here at Afnan Studios! The main cause of this has been a number of opportunities for theatre photography in London and the south west. I've done PR and production images for Little Sapling Theatre, Quite Nice Theatre and State of the Heart Story Telling. The actors headshots keep rolling in with both new and repeat clients.  And finally, I have visited twelve theatres and photographed over 40 abridged Shakespeare plays as part of the 2012 Shakespeare Schools Festival.

Keep reading for some stunning examples of theatre photography in London and the South West.



Live theatre photography is one of the most challenging aspects of my work, especially when the actors are children! It looks deceptively simple. But when you combine low light, moving subjects, nervous children and restricted shooting positions, things become pretty challenging pretty quickly.

If I can avoid it, I never use flash and high ISOs and fast glass are required to bring the shutter speed up to around 1/100th. Even then, motion blur is a concern, so a steady hand is needed especially with telephoto lenses. The light meter on your camera is pretty much useless, particularly since cameras are more or less sensitive to different colours of light. Moreover, focussing is far from straight forward with the aperture opened right up. With a number of actors on the stage at one time, the closest subject is often not the one you want in focus.

This is why experience, expert knowledge, the right equipment and an eye for a great shot counts! And when composition, exposure, focus and expression all come together in one photograph, theatre photography can be one of the most rewarding genres to work in.

The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and schools and parents alike have been delighted to receive a large collection of sharp, dynamic and properly exposed images of their young stars and starlets.

Below are a selection of theatre photography images from this years Shakespeare Schools Festival.

Thanks for looking!

Sean

© Sean Afnan 2012, all rights reserved