Hello, Dolly – Fourth Night’s Show
When photographing the same event several times, one can be tempted to become complacent or bored, from a photographic standpoint. The newness is gone, and it’s easy to become mentally, or creatively, lazy.
Even with the best of performances, as the Hello, Dolly shows certainly were, I eventually found myself beset by that familiar temptation to slack off some on the photography. It’s human nature, I guess, to feel you’ve seen everything there is to see after a few times. But I know from experience that that’s rarely true, and I’ve learned that instead of letting up, I need to work harder, photographically.
On this fourth night’s production of Hello Dolly (on September 12), I pushed myself to continually look for new moments, and to try new angles and shooting positions. I challenged myself to look for the “prize” moments that I had missed during previous performances.
Constantly keeping my eye to the camera’s viewfinder and being ready to shoot allowed me to see and capture the fleeting expression in the above photo. Other times, rather than an expression, the prize moment might have been a movement or a great composition. Whatever the case, those prize moments are often fleeting — gone in an instant. If you’re not ready for them, you’ll miss them. Once I begin finding and capturing such moments, that motivates me to keep looking for the next prize moment. I can then almost feel the complacency and mental laziness within me begin to diminish.
If you’d like to see more photos from West Side Civic Theatre’s production of Hello, Dolly on September 12, please visit the Hello, Dolly photo gallery. I’m still editing the photos of the final performance on September 13, but I expect to post them by September 17. So please check back then to see those final photos.
To my delight, I managed to nab a few more prize moments during the last performance of Hello, Dolly!
P.S. Looking for Oklahoma! Photos?
Because this website launched in August, 2008, there are no blog posts about the musical, Oklahoma!, which took place in May/June, 2008. However, numerous photos were still taken of several of the Oklahoma! performances, and they can be viewed in the Oklahoma! photo gallery.
Be sure to check out the other Hello Dolly articles: Hello, Dolly, Hello Dolly — Second Night’s Show, Hello, Dolly — Third Night’s Show and Hello Dolly — Final Performance.
