For the fourth year running BPS were invited to photograph The Rat Pack when they performed at The Artrix on 11th January.
We always view this as a great opportunity for the club members as generally, of course, you are not allowed to photograph in a theatre.
As well as the “tribute” artists taking the parts of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davies Jnr there were dancers, backing singers and an orchestra together with a lot of projected images.
The main challenge for the photographers related to light. We cannot use flash so have to rely on the theatre lighting which is constantly changing and creates extremes from very bright coloured light where the floodlights illuminate the artists to very dark areas beyond the lights. In many instances the range of light is beyond what even the best modern cameras can handle. Certainly post processing is essential and those taking in RAW get a lot of benefit. Where the coloured lights cause difficulty, converting to monochrome can also help.
With two performances we were able to involve a dozen members most of whom had not done anything like this before, so it was a really worthwhile learning exercise.
Everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy the challenge and all our photos have now been sent to the performers.
Hopefully we will be invited again next year when others can also have a go.
Nigel Taylor
To view larger image, click on picture.
