This week, Distant Era proudly presents the preproduction images for Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville with Music Theater Works. Shout Chicago’s James Juliano once again brought me on board for this on-location shoot.
The Shoot Date
It was a busy day in a busy, emotional week.
Two days prior, I had shot a twelve-hour corporate event in Oakbrook. The following day, I had gone to Billy Bullion’s house to say my final farewell. The next morning, I started at the Greenhouse Theater Center, photographing Young People’s Theatre of Chicago’s If You Give a Mouse Cookie. As soon as we had wrapped up, I drove out to Libertyville for an on-location shoot for Margaritaville. As chance would have it, YPTCHI’s Mack Finklea from my morning shoot also happened to be the stage manager for Margaritaville with Music Theater Works.
I met with my contact James Juliano as soon as I arrived in Libertyville, he introduced me to the team, and we got right to work.
Photography
Initially, we had discussed doing the shoot indoors, but Music Theater Works had found an outdoor spot with the right flavor for what they were looking to capture. Our outdoor location had a rattan background similar to the graphic design used for the show. The location also sported some thematic set elements—a hanging parrot, a monkey, a surfboard, and tiki decor.
As we spoke with Music Theater Works about the logistics of the shoot, actor Brian Acker arrived with his guitar. He sat and strummed while I set up my lights.
Lighting
Our session took place at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday in September. We had plenty of light, though the light was cool and slightly shady, if memory serves. With available light, everything was well exposed, evenly and softly lit. I thought it needed some punch and direction.
For my last (West Side Story) shoot with Music Theater Works, we had gone outside on a bright day and used a silver reflector to overpower the sun with hard, directional light, creating contrast and hard shadows. In this way, we could tone the image to look like something shot at night or in a spotlight. For Margaritaville, I wanted to try something a little less edgy, yet still directional and motivated.
I set up an 500 watt battery-powered light with a large, gridded softbox attached and directed it toward Brian. This introduced some nice shadow detail and some highlights into our image, making the picture look more dynamic, less flat. I showed it to James and to Music Theater Works, got their approval, and continued to tinker.
Too Much Light
On a bright afternoon, even with a little shade, I had to fight for those shadows. With so much light coming into the lens, I needed to restrict that light somewhat so that the scene would have a certain degree of depth that the flash would work to pop the subject from.
One way to achieve this effect is to put a neutral density filter on the camera lens, but I didn’t have one on hand, and I haven’t tested the ones in my camera bag enough to be comfortable with their quality.
Instead, I dialed my ISO to 100 and set my aperture at 5.6 to darken the image. With flash, my shutter speed can only be 1/200, but this was still too bright. To address the issue, I turned on my flash’s high-speed sync, which allows me to shoot at a faster shutter speed at the cost of flash power. I set the shutter speed to 1/400, which darkened the background just enough to allow for some shadow depth while popping Brian out nicely with the directional light from the large, gridded softbox.
If any of that sounds dizzying, I’ll admit it’s taken me years to wrap my mind around, and I’ve only recently had the opportunities to put these methods into practice.
Even More Light
Once I had my main light set and things were looking good, I felt we could use some highlights on Brian’s hair. I set up a second, smaller, 100 watt, battery-powered light on a stand behind and to the right. I added a small fresnel lens to the front of this light to focus it. The result looked like a ray of warm sunshine touching Brian’s hair. I showed James, and we agreed this was even better. It gave a nice warm vibe to the image, suggesting summer days at the edge of paradise.
Working at full power in the afternoon sun, the lights did their job to add a pop of visual interest, turning what might have been an acceptable image into an image with a little more spark and verve.
Editing
There were no wigs in this picture, so editing went much faster than West Side Story. I used a relatively light touch, added a little warmth, and in one instance, I added a parrot from a different photo to the opposite side of the image, since it was behind the subject in the image I captured. This was relatively painless, and once I put in a shadow on the rattan background behind the parrot, everything seemed to match pretty well.
And that was the story of Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville with Music Theater Works! The show runs through November 1, 2026, at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. Regular readers of The All Worlds Traveller may notice that the show also features Khaki Pixley—our makeup artist in last week’s post on Matt Keeley’s Great Big Birthday Fitness Photoshoot—in the role of Tammy!
Many thanks to James Juliano, Music Theater Works, and Brian Acker for making this such a great shoot. Wishing Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville great success in its run!
