Aer­ial per­for­mances at the 2017 Sideshow Fringe Festival

How do you choose the “best” of the pho­tog­ra­phy from five days and dozens of pro­duc­tion? I don’t really have a good answer. There are ways of rank­ing, and rerank­ing, and rererank­ing, work until the “top” bub­bles up. Another way is to try and include one work from each per­for­mance, but that’s not always pos­si­ble either. Maybe a quota of the best from each day? Nah, that’s not really fair either. And would any of them give a good sense of the whole experience?

What I have done, some­what for pos­ter­ity and some­what to try and just make one post (instead of the dozens I could make), is to go through my saved pho­tos from the entire expe­ri­ence and put together a set of all those that rep­re­sent the expe­ri­ence.. Then I culled and culled until I had the 32 images below that give the best view into what it was like to see the entire 2015 Sideshow Fringe Fes­ti­val. Or, at least, that’s my selec­tion for today!

Many kudos to Jes­sika Mal­one and Mitch Mas­saro for their incred­i­bly vivid direc­tion, and the same to all of the tech­ni­cal staff that ran a seam­less expe­ri­ence for every­one. And, of course, plau­dits and praise for all of the per­form­ers. An incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence for all!

I was for­tu­nate to be the Sideshow Fringe Fes­ti­val 2015 pho­tog­ra­pher, and as always there were many incred­i­ble ses­sions of the­ater, aeri­al­ists, pup­pets, and music. There are many, many, many tac­tics one can uti­lize when pho­tograph­ing per­for­mances. Long expo­sures, high-ISO cap­tures, processed images to high­light the per­former — all are good options. Another option on engag­ing the sub­ject: shoot once, process none. Shoot film, process, and take what develops.

In addi­tion to the actual live per­for­mances, I was also invited to check out some rehearsals, includ­ing the work of the FALL com­pany. It was pretty incred­i­ble to lis­ten in and hear some of their process as they rehearsed through the work, and to try and unob­tru­sively cap­ture some of the dis­cus­sions in pho­tos. Below are three of those images next to one of the per­form­ers dur­ing the rehearsal set.

FALL Rehears­ing, Side Show Fringe Fes­ti­val 2015

Giv­ing up some con­trol with the medium lets me work in the avail­able light­ing and motion with­out stress­ing over the upcom­ing post-processing. A chance to pho­to­graph the mood and ambi­ence in the unpol­ished envi­ron­ment. A bit of a looser, yet more focused, feel­ing from the per­form­ers seems to come out in rehearsals. When the dancers are con­tin­u­ing the com­mit­ment of their work to mus­cle mem­ory it’s almost like a photo cri­tique. Peo­ple are look­ing for input, look­ing for encour­age­ment, but also any­thing that helps rise the level of the work is welcome.

Many thanks to FALL for allow­ing me to shoot the rehearsals!