Stage Photography light with mind and brain

Stage photography or Theatre photography is an important genre in photography. This genre is mainly used for documentation and advertising purpose. The stage is designed with various types of lights. These are installed in a much-planned way because every inch of the stage needs light.

Types of light

The light design on stage creates live moments more dramatically using soft lamps, spotlights, fixed focused lighting, broad lights, and floodlights. These lights help to capture moments in the genre of stage photography.

 LED light – a new entrant in the field of stage lighting

The LED light on stage photography shouts their presence 10 years back. At present LED (light-emitting diode) also called par LED lights are used along with the above lights. It changes the Red Green and Blue (RGB) lights in a fixed interval rate or manually changed by the chief light artist. He uses a control panel to control the RGB incident time and mix the lights to produce a new color on stage.

The LEDs are mainly used in the foreground or background of the stage. A series of LEDs helps to make a more dramatic effect all over the stage in a concert.

Chief light artist and control panel

The chief light artist controls all the installed lights and on/off a particular light based on the necessity of the concert moment on the stage. Proper mixing of RGB gives a surrealistic tone in photography. Stage rehearsal with lights is very much important for the dancers, artists, directors, choreographers, light artists, and photographers.

Acknowledgment: Mr. Khokon Prasad, Chief light artist in ICCR, Kolkata (one of the finest light artist in Kolkata)

A script of the dance or dance-drama should be kept with him for the final day on the stage.
It will be a good idea when the choreographer sits with the main light designer at showtime on the control panel. The combination of two personalities makes the live concert more dramatic and helps stage photography. It gives more flavor to the audience to enter into the root of the dance/drama theme.

Floodlights

Illuminate a broad area on the stage. The soft lighting source fixed focus lighting and fluorescent lights are commonly known as floodlights. It is a must light for stage photography.

Broad light

A lamp is surrounded by a box-type cover that covers a small place on the stage. It mainly helps to lighten the harsh shadow on stage photography.

Fixed focus lighting

It covers a wide range of the stage. Mainly this light is installed on the uppermost area, near the roof of the auditorium. The big galvanized type pipe with a horizontal stand is used to hold various lights like floodlights, broad lights, and so on. The broad light helps photographers to capture the perfect moment with adequate light on stage photography. The stand can be either placed before the edge of the stage or in the middle of the background area.

Spotlights

It projects beams of light coming onto the stage. It helps to incident light on the subject. The spotlight beam can flow from the top of the head of the subject or in inclined positions. It creates more drama in the dance/drama on stage photography. The light reflects from the subject only and the rest part of the stage remains dark.
LED par lights are used for both the wings of the stage, background, or foreground based on the design by the main light artist.

My observations

As I observed in various on-stage dance programs; yellow, white, and amber are mainly used for the background and foreground of the stage. The blue light is used as hair light for Indian classical dance. Various transparent color papers are also used for the perfect tone of color on the stage photography.

Frustrating photographers and audience

The frequent changing LED lights are mainly used in light music and dance especially Bollywood dance. The strobe, DJ, and disco lights are also used in this special category of dance. According to my experience, these types of lights prevent capturing the dance movements, expression on stage photography. Maximum time camera captures the black screen. It irritates the serious photographers. It tears the invisible thread which helps to join every moment of the dance/drama on stage. The solemn audience and photographers never appreciates these lights for stage photography. It gives excitement, joy, and formless dance to enjoy a party or something where no serious dance or, a dance drama is going on.

Experienced light designer

Another observation is that the light designer who sits on the control panel should be experienced enough. Otherwise, in a group dance, the main dancers get enough light and the others stay in a 50%-70% dark position. It never creates any dramatic effect. The photographers spend maximum time in a single picture to brighten up the darks from subjects and eliminate high grains. But they have to submit a bunch of photographs covering the whole show to the organizer in a stipulated time.

Light intensity

The main light artist needs to be very careful about the intensity of the light. Proper light (RGB) or mixed light should be given based on the situation of the dance/drama. I observed in some prestigious programs that the light intensity is so low that it creates a disturbance to the general audience. The camera hunts for the focus and grain position rises due to higher ISO. The high intensity of light burns the pictures. I also noticed that the high intensity of reflected light burns the photograph of the main dancer and the supporting dancers have remained in a dark position.

I suggest the dancers, choreographer, director, and prime light artist along with photographer sit and discuss the strength and weaknesses of every step of the program, if possible, produce a good document for future use.

A lot of money, effort of the artists, backstage personalities will be in vain if the light is not in perfect position. The ultimate truth is that a live concert gives us a single opportunity to store the document for future generations. Therefore, we need to be very much careful in every aspect of feasibility, planning, design, and testing the full production before the final presentation of the concert held in front of the audience.