Second Coming - Scottish Dance Theatre @ ZOO Southside (Edinburgh Fringe)

Buono Estente,

Still caught in the mire of my annual post-Edinburgh photo-dumping ... this one was exciting for me because many years ago I was very excited to photograph a beautiful piece by Scottish Dance Theatre called A Visitation, it was stunning, the lighting, the costume and set design, the dance, all brilliant. Then a freelancer with the Times went in the day before and annoyed the company so much they put a blanket ban on Fringe photographers - which seems fair as they always had their own material anyway - but I was always gutted to miss A Visitation. Still, better at that stage of my career to have been the one disappointed than the one who triggered the ban!

The last work by the company that I had seen hadn't been anywhere near their previous standards, pretty much everyone agreed. They'd since hired a new AD and taken a year off the Fringe, and also had a photographer amongst their staff who was meant to be attending the technical rehearsal (working on their new Flickr account as part of their publicity) ... I asked if I could join since she was going to be there anyway, and they made allowances for myself and one other. It wasn't A Visitation, but I finally got to shoot an SDT show ...

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/95550​47564/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/95550​47352/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/95522​55555/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/95550​41968/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/95550​37216/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/95522​50071/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/95550​38400/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/95522​46931/

The use of lighting in these are stunning!

Thanks! The lighting was meant to look improvised (the show starts out pretending there's been a technical problem and that they can't begin just yet, the company's technicians even have walk-on roles and one night our technical managers went up in Uniform and walked across the stage a couple of times) but was of course anything but, and functioned perfectly with the choreography, as you'd expect from a professional company ...

Great, the last one is stunning. Nice timing

They actually held that (more or less) quite still for a few seconds so the timing is less impressive than it might appear - I was predominantly waiting for the bodies to align with the light and the angle I was shooting from, I was lucky that the female dancer moved around slightly to reveal the male and cast a bit more light on herself.

Love number 3 (but you gotta number these as I lost track of which one I was looking at!)

2 looked a little OOF to me

These are Very good! I've shot only a few theater type shows and found it to be quite difficult. I found it really helps to know the show to get the right moments captured and attending the dress rehearsals help a lot. Excellent work. I like the last one the best.