Shoot at the Studio
Here’s a little compilation video of a recent shoot for knitting-phenom Catherine Lowe at the Studio:
Tub Parade in Lenox 2009
A bunch of photos from the Tub Parade in Lenox on 9/12/09 by Kevin
Sprague. Lovely turnout, and fun to see the vintage fire equipment
from Lenox Fire Dept. celebrating their 100th anniversary this year.
Undermountain valley September 2009
Time-lapse HD video of the morning fog. Waiting by the camera as the clouds move through. So many things to do but how can you skip this? I’ll post the video when I get it done. And yes, I might be thinking about that beautiful television spot for Mexico that Gina sent around last week….
Sent from my iPhone
Theater Review – ‘Twelfth Night’ – Shakespeare and Company Turns Elizabethan Self-Discovery Into Child’s Play
Elizabeth Raetz as Olivia, and Ryan Winkles as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in “Twelfth Night.”
Fine fools: Ryan Winkles, left, as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Nigel Gore as Sir Toby Belch.
Great review of Twefth Night in the New York Times with some nice photos running. I haven’t seen the print version of this but I hear it looks good. Elizabeth Aspenlieder knocked it out of the ballpark this August with big, colorful stories in NYT and Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe, in some cases multiple times. I always tell people that marketing lets the audience know that they can buy tickets, but PR actually sells out houses. This production is also testament to having faith in your home-grown talent, as Jonathan Croy certainly is, having mounted more productions of Shakespeare through the Fall Festival than any other person alive except Kevin Coleman. Govane Lohbauer’s fabulous costumes, done on a shoestring, should shame any better budgeted production into obscurity. These talented folks live here, work here, and teach here. We should honor them.
Photographing the Nude at IS183.org
PHOTOGRAPHING THE NUDE
I’m giving a class at is183 in September: visit www.is183.org for
details (or read below)
Kevin Sprague
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Sep 26 – Sep 27 (2 sessions)
Tuition: $135.00 plus $65 model’s /equipment fee
The focus of this class is the creation of beautiful, elegant and
balanced exposures of the human form. We will discuss interaction with
the models and the relationship between photographer and subject. We
will not be creating explicit images. A working knowledge of digital
SLRS and some familiarity with Photoshop is beneficial but not
required. Cameras and lighting equipment will be provided.
Participants will be able to take their own exposures home on CD or
DVD. Participants are free to bring their own cameras and lenses, but
should expect to work with provided lights and environment.
phone (413) 298-5252
info@is183.org
Posted via email from Kevin’s posterous
“Summer” by Edith Wharton – A film project.
My brother Carl has adapted Edith Wharton’s novel “Summer” into a screenplay and we are playing around with shooting trailers to demonstrate the locations, talent, and story for potential investors. I’ve set up a small site for the production here. It’s been a lot of fun playing cinematographer the last two weekends with the lovely and talented Ardis Barrow and good-looking Tom Frelinghuysen as well as a star turn with Chief Wilcox of Stockbridge playing Royall. Here’s some production stills.
Fuzzy Edges
I have a collection of interesting and slightly exotic lenses on my camera shelf here, including a tilt/shift Nikon lens, a tilt/shift nikon knock-off I got from KievCamera.net and a couple of lensbaby variants. The lensbaby, for those who don’t know, is a simple lens connected by a flexible tube to the camera, and you focus it by moving it around with your fingers. All of these lenses share one common aspect: they make blurry images, or rather, they tend to handle focus in odd ways. I’ve marveled over the years at how this strange effect of focus has an impact on the content and emotion of the photos that you take with the lenses. Our brains are wired in strange ways, as relates to sight. The same image, sharp edge to edge will pale in comparison, emotionally, to one that has focus fall-off. Why is this? My theory is that our visual center is interested in “what is of interest” for the matter of our survival. When you really focus on someone in a conversation, your peripheral vision fades and even noises drop down. You are “focused” on that person. I think that the effect of the lensbaby and other such devices, including the very short depth of field created by view cameras, has the same physiological effect of “focusing” our attention. In any case, here are some photos from the recent BIFF (Berkshire international film festival) that I shot with the lensbaby that I like.
In Progress
Work in progress for Tennessee Shakespeare Company. More to come on this one.
Photos up at Ferrin Gallery
My photos are on display at Ferrin Gallery in Pittsfield through the month of March as part of the Berkshire Festival of Women in the Arts. The show is entitled WOMEN: Portait+ Figure and is really great. I encourage you to go see it. Of interest also is that Leslie Ferrin chose to forgo the usual artists credits on the walls and instead has simply numbered the works, which allows the viewer to guess who the artist is and what their gender is. It’s a nice twist.
I have six nude studies up that I shot for the show. It was an opportunity for me to delve into the subtle world of the human form and the form and shape of it. Thanks to the participation of my talented model, the results fulfilled my desire to create a small collection of classic images. Life is a learning process.
A video experiment
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This is the video I shot of “Dracula”, Darrell Pucciarellos’ Ballet Metropolis Production
at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, MA on November 1st. My Nephew, Ruslan, danced the lead role and the whole cast did a marvelous job. The experiment here has to do with the creation and distribution of High-Definition (HD) video online. HD is a slightly moribund format outside of broadcast because there is no well-developed distribution mechanism (DVD’s are standard-definition). I’ve been playing with how best to bring access to this kind of media and in this case the original HD video (shot at 1080i) has been scaled down slightly to 720P and encoded as flash-video. I think the result is quite vivid. Watch it full screen!
Kevin Sprague at Gallery 37
I hope you can join me at Gallery 37 in Williamstown, MA on October 4th, 2008 between 4-6pm (and who knows what revels after) for the opening of my one-man show entitled PAST/PRESENT.
This show will include work from the past, including selections for the Postmarks series, Tidal Forces, the “Muse” project and others. New work will include a selection of portraits and new composites.
Hope to see you there!
3d Thursday is a great thing.
I’ve caught a number of the 3d thursdays over the last two years in Pittsfield, MA. The brain-child of Pittsfield Cultural Czar Megan Whilden, the celebration of life in the summer in the Berkshires centered on North Street in Pittsfield has grown to be a monster, but a gentle giant one. Blessed with excellent weather for the last outing in August (3d thursdays will continue in September and October), and hosting a top-notch criterium bicycle race in the waning daylight hour, the scene was amazing to behold.
It’s a testament to vision: if you build it, they will come. It’s absolutely amazing to see all and sundry come out to enjoy a walk around this great city. Food vendors, farmers, hipsters, tatooist, kids on bikes, hot rods. Everything is there. Anyway, congratulations and a big shout-out to Megan for her vision and her work and for all the people who have helped and worked so hard to achieve this great thing.
I took a lot of fun photos here on flickr and some here:
Glorious results
Here’s the result of my Alphonse Mucha inspiration project. This image will be used for the inaugural season of the new Tennessee Shakespeare Company. I like the way it came out, and although inspired by the Mucha artwork, it is still my own, and represents how I see the world. Thanks to Brittany Morgan for her willing and able participation!
Inspired by The Clark
We visited The Clark Art Museum last weekend for the Japanese-themed family day and I managed to breeze through the lovely “Like Breath on Glass” exhibit featuring works by Whistler, Inness, William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, Eduard Steichen, and Thomas Wilmer Dewing. I was struck in particular by the romanticism and story in Dewing’s work, which has a very modern quality to it of leaving you in a state of curious wonderment. I was also drawn to the immediate parallels with Maggie Mailer’s recent exhibition at the Ferrin Gallery in Pittsfield.
During a photo shoot with the lovely Brittany Morgan, currently acting at Shakespeare & Company in both “Othello” and “All’s Well that Ends Well”, who consented to model for me for another project, I was inspired to see if I could simulate the effect that Dewing produced (after all, the model was in a corset…).
Anyway, here are the results of that experiment:
Last week’s photos
Here’s a gallery of last week’s activites in the photo department. I shot some harsh, dramatic portraits of Dennis Krausnick for his upcoming Lear Project, as well as a nice quick head shot. “A Man for all Seasons” at BTF provided a lush pallette to work with. I worked on image ideas for “As You Like It” for the Tennessee Shakespeare Co., I shot some tricky art pieces at Sienna Gallery by Lauren Fensterstock (a lovely person, I might add), and I shot my friend Michael Zaretsky along with Violinist Victor Romanul and composer John Williams all together on the back porch of Blantyre during a thunderstorm for a new CD that they all collaborated on. Oh, and quick setup up shots for “The Goat Woman of Corvis County” at Shakespeare & Co, as well as an impromptu appearance by Governor Deval Patrick at the opening of “Othello”, and some nice landscape architecture shots for client Greylock Design Associates….Phew!
Small Treasures
In the midst of all the discussions I have been having for the last few months relating to Berkshire Creative and the development of the creative economy concept in the region and the state, it’s easy to overlook the fact that all of these ventures, whether they be Tanglewood, Shakespeare & Company, Interprint, or any other business in the Berkshires is always the result of an act of vision.
In business, we talk about entrepreneurship as something that can be fostered, learned and nurtured. We don’t often talk about vision: that idea of something that does not yet exist, and yet is worth pursuing. Tina Packer’s vision of a Shakespeare theatre in the trees at The Mount became over 30 years later this wonderful, expanding institution. Vision is a very distinct thing, an event of clarity that creates a series of goals ahead. In my life, I’ve always tried to set goals, and just about every goal I have set for myself I have achieved, but before I can set new goals for myself I need to have a vision of what can be and what will be, and sometimes when I try to look ahead the way seems cloudy. That fog is risk, the chances that we need to take, the obstacles we need to overcome to achieve our goals.
I’m working on a bunch of different visions right now, trying to sort out what the next markers will be, what the next goals. But I was inspired last night when I went to Mixed Company, down in Great Barrington to see Joan Ackerman’s “Mixed Company” put on “Indian Blood” directed by Kristine Wold. This tiny theatre has been running for 26 years under Joan’s singular direction and vision. It is a gem, a wonderful, local creative space where all my friends and neighbours get together and put on wonderful plays. It’s distinctly local, but none the less professional for being so.
Before the play we did some fun shots with the cast out on the railroad tracks behind the theatre. Thanks to Stephanie Hedges for putting the impetus for the shoot together. If you hear about Mixed Company and have a free evening, go see them. Creativity is living there.
Rainy Day Photography
This weekend I did a 3-part photo shoot for Barrington Stage Co. for pre-production publicity photos. The whole shoot took less than an hour and a half, and I’m really happy with some of the shots. In each case, my setup was a minimal one or two strobe heads and an umbrella.
Shooting theatre work can be both rewarding and frustrating. It’s frustrating in that the sense of urgency and timeliness is all. Also, it’s often a kind of ‘run and gun” type of job where you don’t really get to being much to the task other than showing up and paying attention. It’s rewarding because you get to drop into other people’s creative space and play in it, and because the content varies so much. Like these photos of three completely different plays: The Violet Hour, Seussical, and Scary Girl.
I particularly like the shots of young actor Austin Lysy for the way that with just a few simple props, the right light and the right clothes everything came together.
All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday Afternoon.
Austin Lysys
Austin Lysys
Kathryn Burgner
Nice day for a white wedding
I photographed a wedding for my friends Sam and Molly Saturday, june 14th. It was a hot, muggy day with a bit of rain in the middle, but it all worked out. You can check out a little glimpse here.
I shoot 1-3 weddings a year, mostly for friends and family. It’s a fun job but also very demanding, and you really can’t screw up. My basic assumption living here in the Berkshires is that it is going to be a dark, rainy day, so I always come prepared with strobes and spare cameras. So far, so good….
Shooting a wedding can be pretty creative. I like to break out my funky lenses, including a couple of tilt-shift models I have that create some interesting focus fall-off effects. I have yet to come to a conclusion for why images that have that effect “look” different emotionally to me, but they just do. I think part of it is learned, something we have been trained by media to think of as “emotional” but I think that the majority of it is that the off-focus areas let your mind do a little playing, and this means dreaming, and that the brain likes to fill in the blanks, sort of like the visualization we do when we read.
In any case. I think this photo really rocks.
Next Book!: Imagining Shakespeare.
I’ve self-published a new book that shows a comprehensive look at all of the work that I have done for Shakespeare & Company for the last 15 years. I had a lot of fun digging through my archives to find all this great stuff. It is 280 pages, 8.5×11 softcover and hardcover, full color throughout. Buy now via lulu.com: Kevin’s Storefront on Lulu.com
Presently I’m working on how to do a 2,000 copy run, which I think is about the right number to satisfy demand for a while and also brigs the per-copy price down. Hoping to crowd-source this initiative through Kickstarter so if you can send me an invite that would be great. If you have any other ideas about how to get this out into the world, I’m interested in that as well, so email me!
