Wednesday, March 25, 2009

From A Different Perspective

I've had the privilege of working in opera for many years, but my work is done behind the scenes. Truth be told, I rarely go see opera in my free time because it's still work for me, in some ways. It sounds terrible, and it seems like I don't support my art... but if I'm tired of it, I'm tired of it.

Monday night, I had the opportunity to be on the other side of the stage: in the audience. There's a flickr group that I'm a part of called Assignment: Houston. This wasn't our monthly shooting assignment, but one of our members has an affiliation with a group called Opera in the Heights, who does just that: perform opera in the Heights, a local Houston neighborhood.

This group welcomes photographers into their dress rehearsals and gives them virtually free reign (no flash restrictions, can wander during the rehearsal almost anywhere but onstage). I'd missed the last three shows by virtue of participating in my opera gigs outside of Houston, but this one happened to coincide with my time in town.

I had a lot of fun watching an opera with my only worry being "did I get that shot?". I took 2100 photos. No kidding. I got a little excited, and well, the singers were quite active, and since I was playing around with lenses and shutter speed constantly: better safe than sorry, right? And besides, that's the great thing about digital. Low cost once you're past the initial investment and all you need is storage space and sometimes a good editing software.

At any rate, I've narrowed it down to 60 shots. Check them out. A few of my favorites are below:

Confused Falstaff

Secrets

Nanetta the Queen

Early Defeat

Lovers

I'm In So Much Trouble

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

These are terrific! I've been hoping that you'd start taking photos of behind-the-scenes opera stuff.
Love
m

Ann said...

I DO take behind-the-scenes pictures. :) These aren't technically behind-the-scenes you know... but I'm glad you like! There's more on the my flickr page.