Stage Photography – some thoughts

Stage photography is quite challenging. I love to click the portrait and street genre in photography. These are all about human beings and moments of daily life. When I traveled to Jodhpur, Rajasthan as a tourist in 2007, met with a folk cultural programme. It was a Marwar festival. I had a point-and-shoot camera and clicked a hatful of folk-dance moments.

I discovered that nothing was in my hand. Light artist incident light beams depending on dance moment, expression, etc.
Dancer performed his/her best one for a full round success of the dance or dance-drama. They never gave an extra pause for my click.

Devastating result

I copied my picture files on the computer. I was very much excited to see the result of my clicks. The tourist spots, haveli, temples, camel riding, and sunset at khuri village were moderately good pictures. Now the time came to see the stage photography moments. Oh! God maximum were blurry pictures with 70-80% dark all over the picture.

Few pictures (3 or 4) I recovered after spending a long time in my editing table. I was so demotivated. That was a sleepless night. I wanted to face the challenge again and again. I analyzed myself over the night and decided to buy a DSLR camera.

Literature review

I explored various photography websites and YouTube channels about camera and stage photography. The budget to buy a good camera was not possible for me at that moment. After a thorough survey, I told myself, “Yes, PC, go for Nikon D3100.” It was an entry-level DSLR camera. I purchased it with one year EMI scheme.

Thought for DSLR camera purchase
When I did the dissection of the dance pictures, observed two prime issues.
A) Freezing the high speed
B) More light in the picture without flash
C) Capture the perfect moment, which is completed in a fraction of a second.

Approaching the dancers to carry through programmes

I contact several dancers of kolkata, India to attain their dance programmes for stage photography. I was fortunate enough that they gladly accept to do my experiments with high ISO and high shutter speed. Biyas (my daughter) helped me a lot to freeze the moment with high speed. I practiced with a single 40-watt bulb light. Biyas ran here and there in the room, jumped, or formless dance at the age of 5 years. At present, she learns various formats of dance and doing very well.
I went to Golf green, Kolkata to cover the Holi festival’s dance. There were so many dance groups performing their best in front of the audience and lots of cameras.
I clicked various moments and bit excited to see the result. I was in an improved version now but found a lot to work out to stand with other stage photographers. The techniques, mechanisms of the camera were the priority to me to embed the concept of freezing moments with accuracy in my pictures.

Covering various dance programmes

I went to various dance programme and interact with my mind and brain to improve my stage photography. Every programme taught me a new lesson. My student Soumik Banerjee (MCA) was the shadow figure in all stage photography. We interact about the camera mechanism, light, exposure, white balance, ISO, shutter speed and, aperture hour after hour.

Digital darkroom

I develop my clicks with free editing software. I was happy with the editing of my jpeg pictures. In 2016 I taught myself Adobe Photoshop. YouTube and various websites helped me a lot to improve my skill. I was amazed to get the final product of a photograph from PS. The accuracy of RGB for every pixel gave me more satisfaction to edit in Photoshop. The noise reduction and sharpness with the Gaussian algorithm helped me a lot to improve my stage photography.

Keep in mind for stage photography

There is no repetition of a moment in stage photography. It was impossible to direct the dancer to chin-up or down, see this or that side. There is no way to set the dancer in the light beams to capture the twilight effect, couldn’t direct to hold the dancer’s expression to click from various angles. All are one time and maximum moments are ended within a fraction of a second.

Observations till 2021

Please do not get surprised that from 2014 to November 2021 I clicked more than 5 lac moments out of which 4.5 lacs on stage photography. The good and bad thing is that I am my teacher. Various sites indeed help me a lot to update my skill in stage photography.

I shall publish about the moments, posture, etc of dancers in my next article. Today I want to tell you about my observations on the technicalities of the camera.

Technicalities of DSLR camera

Camera
Professional DSLR is a must gear for stage photography. The crop sensor is good enough for it.
When you set your mind to buy a pro DSLR, read and view the reviews of various cameras and investigate how much texture can be captured by the camera from books, websites, videos, etc. Go for cropping images up to 200% and analyze the texture.

Focus
Focus fast autofocus with 100% accuracy. More focus point like 55, 72, or 152 helps you to capture the dynamic subject with 99.7% accuracy. More cross focus gives you a better result.

ISO ( International Organization for Standardization )
ISO 640 to 10,000 based on the intensity of light. Generally, you may capture dance postures moments with ISO 2500-6400.

Lens
I never encourage you to buy a fast lens (f/1.4 or f/1.8 etc). Go for a normal short zoom lens with f/4.0 to f/5.6. Why? The dance programme never gives you a chance to change the lens from wide to telephoto or normal lenses. You can do;but compensate yourself with the departed moments missed at the time of changing the lens. Especially the annual dance programme is designed with a group dance, solo dance, dance drama and so on.

The fast lens with aperture f/1.8, f/2 cannot give you a sharp image of a group dance in stage photography.A short zoom lens like 18-105mm or 18-140mm or 18-200mm lens is a good choice. If you want to capture a solo dance with more closeup then go for 70-300mm with f/5-6 or f/6.3

Shutter
Shutter speed maximum time 1/250s or 1/320s to freeze a moment with 99% accuracy. The lens should run with VR (vibration reduction). it is a must.

White Balance
There are multiple options are available in white balance. For example: Auto (keep white, normal, keep warm lighting colors, White balance presets, Incandescent, Cloudy, Fluorescent etc. Set it Auto Normal.

Focus point
Single focus point helps to detect the eye of the subject easily.
Go for AF-ON that is back focus. It helps to click a picture much faster and direct the camera to do one job at a time. So, the shutter release button will be used for capturing the image purpose only. It increases the life of your camera in all types of photography.

Focus mode
It should be AF-C (autofocus in continuous mode).

Metering mode
Set matrix for Nikon, set Evaluative for Canon and Multi pattern metering mode for Sony DSLR in most cases on stage photography.

Flash
Never use flash in stage photography. It distracts the concentration of the dancer as well as the audience.