theatre – nancy merrill photography

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Threes

During her last summer at Southern Utah University, our daughter had the opportunity to do an internship with the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah. She was in two of the stage shows and also part of the Greenshow troupe that performed each night before the evening shows. These three photos are from the Greenshow (photography not being allowed in the stage shows). The first two include some of her fellow troups mates, and the third one is just her, but it made a nice trio of photos.

For more from this challenge, visit Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: 3 items or the number three.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Eyes

I just can’t get enough of these eyes. I’m also including a slideshow of previously posted eye images.

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For more from this challenge, visit Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Eyes.

2017 Trevor Carpenter PhotoChallenge Week 50: Intentional Camera Motion

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This picture is from a production of Twelfth Night at the Lincoln Park Conservatory by Midsommer Flight. It was a fabulous production.

For more from this challenge, visit the Trevor Carpenter PhotoChallenge 2017: Intentional Camera Motion.

One Photo Focus: March 2016

I was asked by Stacy Fischer at Visual Venturing to provide an image for the March 2016 One Photo Focus challenge. The image I picked is this one of the north stairs of the Adams Memorial Theatre at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

The theatre sits on the Southern Utah University campus in Cedar City, Utah, and opened in 1977. It is one of the most accurate replicas of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the world (at least the back and main stage areas). This last summer (2015) was the last year that plays will be staged at this theatre. The festival is building a new theater to replace this one, so this last summer was a bit nostalgic for festival goers.

For my edit, I first opened the RAW image in Photoshop’s RAW converter and used the following settings:

With these settings, I got this image:

Next, I added the following two duplicate background layers, each with a layer mask:

Soft Light blending mode
Multiply blending mode

On the Multiply layer, I added a Gaussian Blur at 15.0%. All of this created this image:

Next, I used a soft brush set at 100% opacity and in the layer mask of the Multiply layer mask, erased the theatre sign. I then set the Opacity of the SoftLight layer to 55%.

Here is what I had so far:

A quick crop to tighten up the image gave me my final image:

For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: March.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!

Cee’s Black & White challenge: Seating

This photo is from a production of The Odd Couple my husband and I were in the first year we were married. Not only is Paul (playing Felix) sitting in a seat, but you can see the audience seating behind him.

For more from this challenge, visit Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Seating.

This post was chosen as a featured image for this challenge. Thanks, Cee!

A Photo a Week: Fight! Fight! Fight!

Several years ago (more than I really want to admit), I was asked by some friends to take production stills for a local community theatre’s production of Much Ado About Nothing. I played the piano for the incidental music (this play could almost be consider a musical, Shakespeare put so many songs in it), and I had just purchased my very first DSLR camera. I love how the pictures turned out, and this week’s challenge entry is one of my favorites from the shoot. Beatrice and Benedict cannot woo sensibly nor easily, and you are never really sure at the end of the play if she will kiss him or punch his lights out, but it sure is fun to watch.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO OF CONFLICT OR FIGHTING, WHETHER COMIC OR SERIOUS.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ and “Photo a Week” tags.
Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Community

Community theater is a big thing in the Salt Lake Valley. My husband and I have performed with many theater companies in the city. The theater community is a tight-knit group who work hard and play hard together. This picture is from the West Jordan Arts Council production of A Christmas Carol. My husband plays Peter Greenlaw, a character usually left out of movies and stage shows, but is in the Dickens story.