Sunday, August 14, 2011

The Lion King at the NAC – 26 July 2011

I’ve had very little time this summer for photography … processing takes time and I cannot see a point in making images that are not complete. The week from hell, where my kids and I gutted the kitchen completely and removed the majority of the flooring in the house delayed any chance of finishing the processing of the Lion King until this weekend …

I booked a couple of tickets and took my youngest to see the play. He had only seen one other play with me (6 Characters in Search of an Author at the Gielgud Theater in London) and we thought it a nice idea to do it again on my birthday.

I booked some decent seats, or so I thought. The second box on the mezzanine at the left side of the stage should have been superb. But it turns out that the stage box in front of us is at about the same level (they start rising at the third box) so we had our vision blocked by rails and heads. These are definitely the worst boxes I’ve tried … a warning to anyone reading this.

What was worse, the NAC has strict rules against images, so I had to keep the camera in my coat and shoot from chest level at best. Needless to say, getting a clear path while people are moving around is a nightmare. In the end, I managed about 26 decent images, with about half of them suffering slight motion blur. Too bad, so sad. You can see the entire set here, but I will show a subset of the better ones …

The setup was pretty typical for a ballet, but with the addition of a larger orchestra pit. At least, that’s what my eyes were telling me. This was actually shot during the intermission.

Note: All of the images in this article were shot with the Fuji F550 EXR. Every one is processed from RAW using ACR 6.3 and CS5.

You can see a guy standing in the front row and looking into the pit. The stage seemed very small and Karen mentioned later that she has seen it many times and the Ottawa stage is smaller and rather cramped when compared with Toronto and New York City.

The play starts and shortly we get a huge procession of animals down the aisles … several are in the audience as well, including one in the box across the theater from us. Very cool …

The elephant is huge and is the highlight of the procession … it is amazing that they can animate something that big with just a couple of people …

I won’t go over the whole story … if you have not seen the movie or the play, I urge you to rectify that asap. It is a piece of pop culture not to be missed. The music in the movie is stellar … as anything by Elton John would be in my opinion …

My first image of Scar is not great, as he was the first I tried capturing. It took a while to get used to such a nasty pose. So this one is blurry …

Here’s a decent shot of Mufasa and Zazu chatting … and you can see that I really struggled to shoot around the bars that held us in our cages along the walls …

My only closeup of young Simba I think … I really could not get many images in the first half. I got a lot bolder later …

Just before the intermission, when Mufasa dies, the little girl in the seat behind me (the box holds 4) sobbed for quite a while. It was sweet and sad …

After the intermission, I got a nicer shot of Scar, but without seeing his face.

I think this might be a battle scene later on …

Here are a couple of nice shots of Nala and Simba …

And one emotional image that shows how much acting goes into this production, even with all the costumes distracting us …

My favorite image of the night. This is the kind of image I like to capture at concerts and plays. I got a decent one like it at Mama Mia! and this one might even be better.

A nice image of Zazu and Rafiki …

And the bows …

The two Nalas …

The two Simbas …

And the whole cast …

So despite its rather small scale, the Ottawa presentation of the Lion King was still a huge treat. The singing is first rate and the costumes are magnificent. And the story, as we all know, as absolutely great.

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