Scott News

Sosi has been juggling for Circus Oz since early 2002. She has been the only person that is always happy and cheery and will be sadly missed when she goes off to have her baby.

Circus Oz group photos have always been a bit of a doozy. Some people are up for the photo, and some people couldn’t really be fucked and just want to get out of their costumes as soon as possible. Those people with cameras want a group shot for their own posterity, and inevitably you are standing there watching the poor person taking the photo try and work out how to use 17 different cameras.

In some cases you are outside in nothing more than a skimpy bathing suit in -2°C in the middle of Times Square, New York City. So a quick group shot is a fast group shot.

So, because it was Sosi’s last show on Saturday, I suggested that we have a group shot. Which was surprisingly well received.

The plan was as soon as the audience was out after the first show, to have everyone onstage and to take a simple shot from the auditorium.

Just as the show finished, I had the idea to have props as well. I ran this by the stage manager and a few of the performers and they thought it was a great idea.

The main thing taking this photo, and knowing that people wanted it over quickly, was to just remain calm and composed. That was tricky.

While Marco the light guy was switching on all the lights with his remote control doodad, I was framing and firing off a few test shots. As well as directing people with what to do. However, I didn’t have to do too much of the directing at all because I thought what everyone was already doing was fantastic.

Simon, one of the awesome tech dudes at the theatre was able to push the button for me on the camera. Click on it for a bigger version.

So, I thought I’d show the original photo, some processing, and then some more processing.

ISO 100, f/5.0, 1/40. I totally misjudged the light, and instead of setting the ISO to around 3200, I had it at 100. When I got to the side of the stage, Paul was almost in position and I only had time to focus and take the photo. When I checked the LCD afterward I was kicking myself at my mistake of leaving the ISO at 100.

I decreased the blacks, increased the exposure, and increased the fill light. I changed the picture to grayscale, and added a suble split toning colours to dampen the harshness grayscale can sometimes have. As you can see, this left me with quite a lot of noise.

After someone from MacTalk Forums had commented on the noise and how distracting it was, I set out to try and remove it.
1. In photoshop I changed the image to LAB colour, and duplicated the channel that had the least amount of noise.
2. I then ran the Find Edges filter over this channel.
3. Then I changed the levels of this channel to enhance the lines.
4. Next I added to the thickness of the lines by choosing Filter > Other > Minimum (3), then added a slight Gaussian Blur.
5. I duplicated the background layer and on this layer chose Select > Load Selection…; and loaded the new Channel that I had created in 1.
6. Then I created a Layer Mask with this selection.
7. And in the new layer (5.) I selected Filter > Noise > Median…
8. Finally, I added a Levels layer over the new layer (5.) and darkened the blacks a little.

Et voila:

Some of the amazingly talented people that I work with.

Walking up to the stage I set the settings on the camera. I had about half a second to take the shot, and whilst I totally misjudged the light and set the ISO to 100 instead of at least 2000. Consequently the shot was heavily underexposed.

In post production I boosted the exposure as far as it could go, increased the Fill Light substantially, lowered the blacks, and lightened up the mid-tones.

Finally I added some split Toning Highlights and Shadows to take away some of the harshness that grayscale can have.