theater
Yo!
So, it’s cool seeing you photos printed right? Totally! Books, newspapers, something hanging on the wall….
Driving around Oberhausen last week, i spotted three of my photos printed out and hanging on a wall - much larger than i’ve seen before!!! :)
Much love people!!!
© Theater Oberhausen
Hey!
Yeah i know, off the radar again! I would love to say the reason for my blogging absence is due to being so mega busy that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day…etc…etc…
Fact is - i’ve been too lazy! Ok, a little bit busy too, but mainly lazy!
Anyhoo - as the title suggests, we’re going to touch a little on photoshop.
A couple of weeks ago I was over at Theater Oberhausen, doing a promo shoot for an upcoming production.
You’ll note, that yes, i have shot slightly less insane things.
The above image is straight out of camera. You’ll not that we’re shooting inside a built set, within a larger hall. We were actually in the set building hall belonging to the theatre. No much room to shoot inside this wooden box, and a ton of natural light flooding in through the windows.
It needed to be a moody shot anyway, so killing the ambient light and bringing in flash was always on the cards. The biggest problem though was framing the shot. I shot with the widest glass i had - 17mm on a FF sensor - and had to hold the camera to my side against the wall, so i had no real idea what i was shooting.
Anyway, because of the constraints i had, this meant there would be a fairly heavy chunk of post production coming my way in order to keep this shot wide-looking, but having it look like were just in this stripy room!
The final image
Obviously, i’m not a genius, and don’t have hours and hours to spend bringing images through post production. But, the content aware tool is your friend. Selecting parts of the image that are outside of our little ‘room’, and using the Content Aware fill, really does help to speed up the process. In most cases, it’s pretty accurate in expanding the background.
There’s obviously going to be some imperfections to the background, but they can be tidied up using the clone stamp tool, and with some creative (and fairly liberal) use of dodge, burn and vignette, the image came up good!
Here’s another example:
Note the wall to the right of the finished image also came through CA Fill successfully
Content aware is a fairly simple thing to use: use lasso, patch, pen tool, selection brush - whatever you prefer to select an area - hit delete, select content aware, hit enter - job done! There may be some fixing to do afterwards, particularly with busy images, however, the hit-rate is pretty good!
So, this wasn’t really meant as a photoshop tutorial, but whatever! Thanks for reading!
Until next time!
Ant
Hey guys!
It's been a while i know, i've been a busy boy!
Just needed to fire a quick update to you all to let you know that I've been given the honour of being selecting to join the official photography team for the Ruhrtriennale arts festival from 2018-2020!
It's a big thing! And i'd like to send a special thank you to those who have supported me and helped me get to where i am! You know who you are!
x
Ant
Hey!
You may remember from one of my recent posts, that i had a few late nights running around with my friends from Theater Oberhausen.
We set off on a project to complete the photography for the 2018/19 programme magazine, photographing all of the cast individually in alternative workplaces.
The general theme was that they would do jobs that are generally carried out at night. We had a few late nights, and a few early starts. Some delays, some re-edits.
But....
....this afternoon, the magazine finally went to press!! About 40,000 copies are being produced (i think). Crazy seeing something being printed with so many different photographs in, that were all taken by me!
The magazine is released mid-June! So expect another post (or two)! And i will also be posting a series with a look behind the scenes from some of the shoots!
Much love!
Ant
Hi!
Last week took me down south on a first visit to Karlsruhe. I know the football team, but given the fact i thought the city was somewhere near Hamburg just shows how much i actually knew about Karlsruhe itself.
On the agenda, shooting a rehearsal for the Kammertheater Karlsruhe. The production, Gut Gegen Nordwind. Adapted from a novel by Daniel Glattauer, it's kind of a similar take on 'You've Got Mail', just without so much of a happy ending (i won't say more).
A piece played out on stage between two actors. In this production, both known for their TV work in Germany; Ralf Bauer and Gisa Zach.
The drive down to Karlsruhe was fairly uneventful. A bright, sunny, hot day, with the usual bad drivers and roadworks every ten minutes.
Approaching Karlsruhe, the sky was getting darker!
Arrival - dark skies and thunder overhead - from my instastory @leapesportif
I'd made a quick google search before heading down there on what i might be able to do or see in the little time i had before the rehearsal was due to start.
I found that Karlsruhe has an amazing castle and park, with botanical gardens, right bang in the city centre! Even better, just a short walk from the theatre!
What an amazing amount of open space to have in the centre of a city!
This place looked a perfect place to get my drone up in the air and have a look around!
So, i arrived, and thunder was already rumbling in the distance!! I headed to the castle, unpacked, and got the drone up!
Within a minute, the lightning was every few seconds - time to land, and quick - just the one photo shot!
The only shot from the bee. The palace, with rain already falling over the south of the city. © Ape.Photos
As i landed, the rain came down. And not just a shower, but full monsoon stuff!!!
The ten minute walk back to the theatre, with several shelter stops in between, left me looking like i'd actually swam there!
Shelter stop number 3. Back-werk. Coffee was definitely needed!
Simone, the PR officer from the theatre was waiting for me, and as i had a now watered-down coffee in my hand already, got me a towel instead!
No matter how un-stylish you may feel, doing one's jacket up in heavy rain really makes sense!
Meeting the rest of the team there, and the cast, was a really nice experience! A great little venue, and an entertaining production!!
Stage - Set
I'm already looking forward to making another trip down there, and hopefully getting to have a proper look around!!
Oh, and the drive back - wet!
Here's a few images from the production. For more info, visit the Kammertheater Karlsruhe here.
'til next time!
Ralf Bauer © Ant Palmer/Ape.Photos
Gisa Zach. © Ant Palmer/Ape.Photos
Ralf Bauer and Gisa Zach. © Ant Palmer/Ape.Photos
Gisa Zach and Ralf Bauer. © Ant Palmer/Ape.Photos
I've been pretty busy lately. Who hasn't I hear you say? Busy is good right?
A big chunk of my recent work has come from a new customer. A theater in Oberhausen. How this relationship started is very random - a real case of 'right place right time', but i won't go into that right now.
Part of the process of promoting a production is of course taking pictures of it. Not just of rehearsals, but also a preview photo. An image that the theater can put out into the world to whet the appetite of it's patrons.
Last week, my theater colleagues and I headed out to shoot a promo photo for an upcoming production.
The location had been found already. Some old workers houses, with street lanterns attached to the wall, to give the photo the feel of the period in which the production is set (WWII).
Problem was, arriving at the location, all of the houses with lamps attached had cars parked nose-to-tail in front of them. An actress in a 1930's costume, in front of a house from the last century with a new mercedes wouldn't really work!
We scouted the area and found a house with no cars, but no lamp!! Time to improvise!!
In the image below, you can see what i'm trying to do: balance the ambient light so that it's still visible a little, bringing in some soft light from across the road to light the subject but not cause to much shadow, and a flash from above mimicking a street lamp similar to the other houses. The next consideration here is keeping the aperture small enough to make the new street lamp look like a burst of light, and not a flash gun, while still achieving some kind of balanced exposure!
Balance the ambient, flash from front with as little shadow as possible, and a street lamp from above - easy right?
The final image below was a bit of a funny one to edit. It's pretty much as it was in camera, from an adjustment point of view not much has happened. Trying to decide what to do with our new street lamp was the problem!
Anna Polke
I added several vectors of street lamps in photoshop. I even borrowed some street lamps from other images i found on the web. Nothing looked right, or better or more realistic that what came out of the camera.
It almost looks like a street lamp. And the stand it's on is not really dissimilar to the ironwork of the actual lamps on the other houses.
To the untrained eye, thats looking at the subject, it looks fine.
To me and you, it's a flash gun on a stand being held above a guys head who's hiding behind the house :)
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