Portland, OR—My trip to photograph the Wonderheads, a physical theatre company specializing in mask performance and wordless, visual storytelling, started mid-morning on Tuesday, February 3. My flight from Vegas landed on time, and getting my bag from the claim couldn’t have been easier. Andrew, one of the founding “heads,” was waiting outside for me. We introduced, threw my bags in the car and were off to their house about a half-hour away. As we drove, Andrew talked about Portland, it’s layout, and gave me other bits of information that helped me imagine the city as we made our way through the unique neighborhoods. He also answered all the basic questions I had regarding weather, etc. I was definitely struck by the quaintness of many of the houses and neighborhood businesses making up the quiet tree-lined streets. This place couldn’t have been a bigger contrast to Las Vegas, where the Egg was currently stationed.
When we arrived at Andrew and Kate’s place, we hung out and talked about trailer living as well as their life as touring actors—a not so different lifestyle from our own. Later that afternoon, we met the third head at Pröst, a local German pub. We all hung out and got to know each other a little more. We also discussed logistics for the evening’s shoot at a local theater space they’d rented. After about an hour or so at the pub, we went back to their house, loaded up the car with costumes and props and made our way to the theater.
Photographing in the theater space was a new experience for me, but one that I was eager to jump into. It was challenging to work with the existing lighting and make decisions on whether it was easier to move the house lights versus setting up my own flashes and replicate what the production lighting might be similar to. It was also interesting to look at the shots as imperfect in some ways – as if the photos were snap shots of an actual production.
In the end, we used a combination of both houselights and my own lights. Some of the challenges were controlling the light so that it didn’t reflect off random pieces of metal in the room and create distractions in the final photos. Getting everything to look just right was hard but fun. In the end, we completed most items on the shot-list and left the space satisfied with the quality of the shots despite background and other detail shortcomings inherent in the space itself. We resolved that imperfections can/would be fixed in post production.
By the time 10 PM rolled around, our end point, we packed everything out and drove home for the evening. Once we got home we had some snacks and just hung out and looked at the images. One of the shots they wanted to Photoshop to look like the characters were in outer-space, a scene in one of their productions, “Middle of Everywhere”. I worked on that for them—I think to pretty cool results!
The next day, we got everything together after breakfast and made our way over to the photo studio that they had rented for the afternoon. The space was a really neat loft on the second floor of a warehouse building. The light was great in the space and they had some cool backdrops for different moods. This was a pretty fun experience for me, as it was the first time I’ve ever taken photographs in a professional photo studio. It was easy to get the natural light to look great on their masks and the colors and textures popped in the photos. We all immediately knew these shots were going to come out stellar. In addition to great light and space, my subjects were eager and willing to pose and have fun with the camera. This made everything even better! After the five hours we were there, I must have taken 800+ photos—individual member shots, company shots, marketing images of all their productions, and other ones for different promotional purposes. Phwew! This day was even more productive than the day before. Mission accomplished.
On my last day, it was decided that a location shot would be good to have for promotional pieces. The idea was to find a park location nearby that could be made to look more like a deep forest scene with a bus stop and two characters waiting for a bus. The day was our rainiest so far, so it was very difficult to make the shoot happen at all. The masks are hand painted and are fragile in any type of bad weather. We scouted for about 30 minutes and found an angle that would work for the shot idea. We built the scene with some scrap logs and other forest debris and created a set that looked pretty believable. We waited for a bit and when the rain slowed, I took what turned out to be the final shots for this shoot. We all reviewed the shots and agreed they looked pretty good. I took a few extra shots of different things I thought might help should anything need fixing in post, too. We packed up the props and made our way to the car and back home. My flight left a few hours later which allowed for some time to transfer files, hang out, and grab some local Portland food before I hit the plane home.
Thanks for the hospitality Andrew, Kate, and Emily! It was a great trip and I’m glad I was able to help you out.
View portfolio of select images.
