Tag Archives: guide

Features

Taking photographs of your work

If you really want your portfolio to shine, you need good photographs of your props. Taking photographs during a rehearsal or show is another topic entirely; in this article, I’ll be talking about taking photographs either in the shop or backstage.

Blurry and Grainy Pictures

The biggest problem and complaint about bad portfolio pictures are blurry and grainy photographs. Though caused by different things, they are both symptoms of not enough light.

Your camera determines the correct exposure in three ways: shutter speed, aperture, and film or chip sensitivity. With a fast shutter speed, moving objects are frozen in place. As the shutter speed slows down, moving objects become blurred in the photograph. At a slow enough shutter speed, the slight shaking of your hands as you hold the camera will blur the entire picture.

If your pictures are blurry, you need to steady the camera. A tripod is the usual solution. Expensive tripods are made for heavier cameras and able to withstand wind and rain. For smaller cameras used indoors, almost any tripod will help steady your pictures. You can even get table-top tripods, or funky ones like this: Continue reading Taking photographs of your work →

How-to

Dragon Skin

This week, at the Public Theatre, we begin working on some props for The Bacchae. Since there is going to be a dead corpse which is picked apart and torn up on stage, Jay Duckworth has ordered some “Dragon Skin” from Smooth-On to experiment with.

Many of us in the props world are familiar with Smooth-On and their range of products for molding and casting. My father, a potter in Pennsylvania, has been using their polyurethane for years in his mold-making, and they’ve really pushed some new products for theatrical purposes in the past decade or so.

A Silicone Severed Head
A Silicone Severed Head

But wait, there’s more! Their website isn’t just some bland information portal. They have a treasure trove of guides, tutorials, and instructions for using their products. On the special effects and propmaking section you can find step-by-step video sequences, photo sequences, and examples of what other people have done with their products.

You can also find a Smooth-On video channel over at YouTube. This contains many of the same videos showing molding and casting with their products as their website. They also have a list of “Favorites” showing videos from other users making and casting molds.