Category: Stage Light

A Christmas Tradition

Watching the Cary Ballet Company “Nutcracker” last night was wonderful.

I didn’t know it then, but this photograph from 2021 would be the last I would make, after a dozen years of CBC productions. It was inevitable. As Chaucer wrote in 1395: “Time and tide wait for no man.” Decided the next fall, without regret, it was time to retire.

Cary Ballet “Nutcracker” Final Bow | Cary Arts Center | 19 Dec 2021

The extraordinary performance I saw last evening was deeply life affirming. Being part of that, lasts forever. About as long as it will take me to really curate about 5 TB of Digital Negatives! The luxury of time & absence of needing to earn is a new kind of freedom that I fully embrace. Like the hugs I got last night.

Abigail Adams On The Paris Opera

Watching the Ken Burns film tonight about the American Revolution, put me back in a Paris Vacation Apartment, in Marais, after an evening at the Opera for the 50th Anniversary of Balanchine’s Ballet “Jewels”. I was coincidentally reading David McCulloughs biography of “John Adams”. This is an excerpt from Abigail Adams letter of 20 Feb. 1785:

My Dear Sister,

The first dance which I saw upon the Stage shoked me, the Dress’es and Beauty of the performers was enchanting, but no sooner did the Dance commence, than I felt my delicacy wounded, and I was ashamed to bee seen to look at them. Girls cloathd in the thinest Silk: and Gauze, with their peticoats short Springing two foot from the floor poising themselves in the air, with their feet flying, and as perfectly shewing their Garters and draws, as tho no peticoat had been worn, was a sight altogether new to me. Their motions are as light as air and as quick as lightning. They balance themselves to astonishment. No description can equal the reality.

Cary Ballet Company Rehearsal – Raleigh, June 2017 https://www.miamicityballet.org/discover/meet-our-dancers/maddie-goodman/

They are daily trained to it from early infancy, at a Royal academy instituted for this purpose. You will very often see little creatures not more than 7 or 8 years old as undauntedly performing their parts as the eldest amongst them. Shall I speak a Truth and say that repeatedly seeing these Dances has worn of that disgust which I first felt, and that I see them now with pleasure. …. The art of dancing is carried to the highest degree of perfection that it is capable of; at the opera

I have Scarcly room left to say that I am Your affectionate sister

A.A

The Comfort of Late Life – Part Trois

Made a menu today for the rest of this & next week. Then, shopped at Total Wine, BJ’s Warehouse and Lowe’s Foods. My list would be, Doctor Approved!

And there is, I’ve discovered, a freedom, a release from “Worry” with a comfortable, late life. It is simple and elegant. Like an open stage, in theater.

3D Jazz Project at Cary Ballet Conservatory – Rehearsal

Cary Arts Center, February 2016

Genuflection

The luxury of unhurried time without schedule is a great gift of late life. Especially when the Muse refuses to allow sleep and demands attention. It’s taken me a very long time to “see” this image. I hope to get the print right.

Cary Ballet Company Rehearsal for “Cinderella” – 31 March 2011

Intimate of The Muse

Recently, I got skunked in a local Juried Photography Competition. This evening, for a completely unrelated reason, was reading an interview with Joni Mitchell. The interviewer wrote “like Miles, Joni never really played to her fans, speaking directly only to her muse. ”

That is, I do believe, the deal. And how I played.

Call For The Company

When You Get To Be Human

By December of of 2012, I’d found my artistic & spiritual home at Cary Ballet Conservatory. Especially in Theater.

Made this image on 12/12/12 at the Cary Arts Center. Didn’t realize she was my “Muse”. Stage Makeup and Street Clothes. Later, home at my desk, after downloading and backing up the photographs I’d made at rehearsal, I stared at this, with my Bourbon & Beer and realized :

  1. I loved it without knowing why.
  2. I had no idea why it looked this way.
  3. I understood nothing about light. Theater was a comfort zone, the lighting was just there. I was completely ignorant of lighting design and the properties of light!

Spent the next summer learning. Found the work of George Hurrell, another Painter turned Photographer. And Yousuf Karsh, whose work changed after he became involved with an actress and discovered theater lighting. And found my Lighting Bible – for free (Pages 135 through 140)!

And I spent the next 10 years trying to get it right. Haunted eBay:

Mole – Richardson Tungsten Fresnels

And found young dancers who were willing to let me try to make their portraits.

Showtime!

Today, finished editing and posting (including a play I mis”played”) all the dress rehearsals of Cary Player production I photographed for Cary Citizen between 2011 and 2016! Online galleries are here, just click on the name: Cary Players Galleries.

And 2016 was, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever!

Dress Rehearsal – Cary Arts Center – 28 November 2016

The Upside of Age 75

No, this old carcass can’t do what it used to do. Just like the stuff I couldn’t do as a child, before adolescence, teens and adult ages. So we are, I think, on a journey, whether we wish to or not!

3D Jazz Project at Cary Ballet Conservatory – Cary Arts Center, April 2013

There is, in my widower dotage, a blessed quietude and relief from worry. I shopped today for what I had on my list, knowing the budget was okay.

I am blessedly relieved from the incessant noise of oxymoronically “Social Media”. I have no concern or involvement with Door Dash, FaceBook, Uber, TikTok, Amazon Drone Delivery or the really oxymoronically named “Artificial Intelligence”.

I did grow up with and make a living with and from digital technology and yeah, hook up an inference engine to a knowledge data base -you’re still left with what you already know, ya’ know? Just convenient- like a calculator.

So this blessed relief, to borrow a Thomas Hardy title, of being “Far From The Madding Crowd”, is my luxury. I’m good with that.

“Faith and Begorrah”

This afternoon, I finished a fresh edit of “Nunsense”, a 2013 Cary Players production of the musical. It is near the end of all the plays I photographed for Cary Citizen. And I plan to give the finished archive to Cary Players, gratis. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about declaring spiritual free agency.

Primarily, I believe, due to cultural family inertia, I was sent to 1st Grade at a Catholic Elementary School. At that age, you believe the grown-ups, especially in 1956. Eventually I got my Catholic religious ticket punched with 1st Communion, complete with a blue suit and a big family party that funded a new bicycle! And later, Confirmation, where you’re supposed to be old enough to choose – as if I had a choice.

In about a month, I’ll be 75. And I vividly remember being hauled from the asphalt playground to meet Sister Mary Edward of the Order of The Sacred Heart. Drug dealers wish their bull dogs looked that mean. I was accused of being a “bully”, having been seen swinging back at a real bully and defending myself, like my TV Cowboy Heroes. So 2nd Grade me was made to hold out my hands, palm up while Sister Mary Edward beat them with a varnished yardstick. It was real wrong and while I didn’t have the courage to declare my spiritual free agency until late in High School, I knew. I’ve been to churches of three different faiths this year for Choral Concerts. They were wonderful.

Still Learning

By now, I though I’d be further along, organizing and curating a dozen years of work at Cary Ballet Conservatory. The delay is mostly due to the luxury of quiet time and vivid memory. And reflection. An example is this photograph.

Eight years earlier, her Mom hired me to make photographs of her First Communion at the Church Altar. A new and agreeable Monsignor literally gave his blessing to me working during the Mass.

Cary Ballet Company: Space & Tech Rehearsal, 13 March 2019 – Cary Arts Center

One year later, nearly to the day after I made this photograph, there was another Space & Tech Rehearsal for the 2020 production – just days before COVID cancelled pretty much everything. And that Fall, I became a widower.

Things sort of got back to normal by late 2022 – but my “creative spirit” tank was on fumes and I retired.

Now my goal is to share what I learned about Craft and Art. Working on that!

Ain’t No Money In Poetry*

*”Cold Dog Soup” by Guy Clark

The last time I visited with this young dancer was during a Saturday Studio Session. I’d hired her to guide young dancer audition sessions. She had all the technical dance foundation I didn’t. Some “No Shows” allowed time to visit.

And we discussed how even though she had a contract with a professional Ballet Company, when she looked at the hours, it was barely minimum wage.

Later, I learned she went back to university and then entered the corporate world for far better money. Art is really, really hard.

Space & Tech – 3D Jazz Project Co. at Cary Ballet Conservatory Cary Arts Center – 18 April 2012

The Muse Provides – Again

Written about this before. The idea keeps revisiting me. It’s been 13 years since I made this photograph but I know the date and venue, like it was a tattoo. This young dancer, in full stage makeup and street clothes was, to my astonishment, my very first experience with a “Muse”. Trust me on this, Muses are very, very real. She and this appearance, changed my work and understanding of light for the next decade. And she appeared, in another form, 10 years later. And is currently helping with the nascent outline of a book (s).

As an “Old Guy” on the backend of my life on this planet, it is wonderful to be free to read and think (and cook) sans the pressure of all the stuff that younger folks are pressured by. No Mo Fomo ;-).

Cary Arts Center 12 December 2012

Sunday Reflection II

Yesterday afternoon at the North Carolina Museum of Art got my creative wheels in gear. Working in theater was always magical to me. Especially with no audience to disturb and freedom to move around. I never found it work.

Cary Ballet Conservatory Rehearsal for “Cinderella” 11 June 2014

Sunday Reflection

I was on the edge of digital camera technology, in December of 2010. 14+ years later, this is still in my heart. Time since, allowed me to learn how to take an image to what I saw. And it’s good to have training as a painter. Caravaggio and Edward Hopper would understand. 20″x 16″ Print on order.

Cary Ballet Company Dress Rehearsal “A Gift For The Little Match Girl” 17 Dec. 2010, Jones Auditorium at Meredith College – Raleigh, North Carolina

A Reason To Believe

I don’t know what year this was, image metadata was washed out when I made the Jpeg. And I’m not about to abandon the comfort of a gorgeous spring day to go back indoors to dig into an image archive. What I’m certain of, it’s a dress rehearsal at the Cary Arts Center.

The instructor moved away later, from a lobby full of hugs and tears. Years after, while I still had a LinkedIn account, she was very kind in response to my request for pre-ballet dance school recommendation in the greater Atlanta area.

As an artist, this was my Superbowl Fifty Yard Line. Why I made photographs.