This is a preproduction photograph of Kimberly Logan in Babes With Blades Theatre Company’s 2010 production of The Last Daughter of Oedipus, by Jennifer L. Mickelson (who was featured previously in Inspiring Sword, Pen & Picture).
It is from the first photo gig I ever did, shot against a sheet or towel on the floor of a public park building, and in spite of the limitations of my experience, it remains one of my favorite theatre photographs I have taken.
Passion vs. Expertise
In those earlier days, the art was more passion and discovery than technique or style. In 2010, I had dozens of ideas for composition because I knew little more about light than how to get a proper exposure within the parameters of the available light and my camera sensor’s (not ideal) capacity to capture it. Limited toolbox, wealth of ideas.
Buoyed by inspiration and unburdened by expertise, I asked if we could create a shot where the hands were grasping, clawing, and dragging Ismene (Kimberly Logan’s character) down, similar to the poster for Sam Raimi’s 1981 film The Evil Dead.
I have always loved this photograph thanks to the work Kimberly Logan and the actors playing the hands of Fate put into it. It’s an image that was performed rather than posed, and in Ismene’s struggle against the disembodied hands of the Fates in this capture, you can see in her eyes the desperation and defiance that, along with the monochromatic palette and grainy texture, contribute to the horror film aesthetic.
Limitations
Eleven years later, I can see that it’s far from a perfect photograph. The shutter speed is 1/60 of a second, which can be adequate if no one is moving, but clearly there is motion in this image, and it was more evident prior to editing. If you look carefully at the postcard below, you can see the texture of the sheet behind the subject, which I surely had no idea how to remove at the time. The camera is a 10 megapixel Canon EOS 40D, which was a great camera to bridge the gap from film photography to digital, especially in bright daylight, but its cropped sensor and its low light tolerance left much to be desired. Had I understood flash photography or the Adobe Creative Suite or good retouching practices at the time, perhaps I would have done better; I might have emphasized the light and dark portions better; I might have hidden fillings or blemishes or stray hairs. And yet…
And Yet…
None of those limitations really matter to me when I see this image. It remains one of my favorite photos. These were the things I knew back then. This was the equipment I had. This was the level of my learning, skill, and interest. The actors’ hard work and talent continue to imbue the image with life.
Besides, when I look back on any of the art I’ve done in the past—from performance to written narrative to photography—I either see their flaws and the lessons I learned from those works… or else I wonder if I can ever be as good again. And even after years developing technique and style, I have looked back on this one from time to time and remembered the enthusiasm and adventurous spirit of my first gig and wondered if I can be as good again. But there’s not much point in dwelling on such questions. Observe, contemplate, make something new. The art of one’s present very quickly becomes the art of one’s past.
Excavating the Past
Occasionally when I’m going through an old hard drive, I like to go back and re-edit images from the distant past to see what I might do with them today. Late in 2020 as I was gathering images for the performance section of the Distant Era website, I stumbled on the Last Daughter of Oedipus session from May 2010, noted the orange lighting and skin tones, the underexposed portions of the photo, and the lens distortion. I set about to develop the image to make it look a little more like a film capture, raising the exposure, desaturating skin, smoothing out the distortion, adding a light source to the top left corner.
I gave similar care to the image originally used in the Last Daughter of Oedipus poster featured at the top of this post, keeping as true to the original aesthetic as possible while cleaning up the image and masking the towel.
Legacies
Is it worth it to edit old images like these? I think so, if for nothing more than to give old memories a fresh look, and I think the care and editing of the photo changes with time and perspective. For example, the Last Daughter of Oedipus session was the day I met my longtime friends Kimberly Logan (center) and Sarah Scanlon (right) in the photo above. We had known each other less than an hour when these images were taken. Nearly a decade later, Amy Harmon (top left) would be the subject of my first headshot session, and Sarah one of the very first subjects of the original three Distant Era series.
But that’s another story…
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