Photography for the poster for TORNI — THE TOWER. Lighting is two speedlights on stands, one camera left, aimed up at Hautala, and the other aimed at the door behind the Rabbit. Ambient exposure dialed down.
As it is the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, I took a look back at the projects I did in 2016. One of the longest commitments for me—and the most fun—was Flow Production's excellent piece called TORNI — THE TOWER. It premiered in September 2016 but the crew started working on the piece already in 2015.
As is usual for performance pieces, the promotional photography needs to be shot many months in advance for marketing the piece. You need to have a promotional package ready for festivals throughout the year, for flyers, social media, the press and so on, way before the actual premiere. THE TOWER was no exception: these poster and flyer images were shot in April 2016, some five months before the premiere. Hence the pile of snow in the top image, lower right-hand corner.
I have shot promotional photography for a number of Pirjo's productions and the process is familiar to me. The challenge is that while the concept of the piece is of course ready and rehearsals are usually well on their way, visual stuff usually isn't complete until sometimes just a few days before the premiere. There are no costumes, or maybe there are only drafts of costumes. No hair, no makeup, no set design, no props, no lighting etc. But you need to have images that at least somehow convey the feel of the piece. And so you hope that you don't end up shooting something that the audience will never see in the actual performance, hence not cashing in on the promises you made in the marketing.
Flow Productions' Pessi ja Illusia is another case in point. When I photographed the early marketing stuff for P&I there was NOTHING ready, just some materials and a pair of these really beautiful fairy wings that costume designer and artist Pirjo Valinen had. And this is what we came up with:
One CTO-gelled speedlight for the wings, ambient exposure dialed down, camera white balance set to tungsten. Graphic design by Tomi Hurskainen.
The idea we had for the promotional image was to somehow convey a magical feeling (the piece is based on a well-known Finnish fairytale), that would incorporate the themes of the performance. The contrast between soft and hard or delicate and rough was something that we wanted to include, while also alluding to nature and the forest, specifically. I also wanted to bring in the warm/cool contrast for the image. And there we had our promotional image! (Here you can see what the piece and the characters actually looked like on stage.)
OK! Back to THE TOWER.
The piece was set in the Intiö water tower, a famous landmark in Oulu. The tower was completed in 1927 and it was designed by the architect J.S. Sirén in 1925. The tower was retired in 1969. Most recently, an intrepid Costa Rican by the name of Daniel Herrera bought the damn thing and has exciting plans for it.
Pirjo fell in love with the tower and wanted to create a piece that would be performed in it. The audience (about 35 people, max) would be taken inside and watch a performance complete with aerial acrobats, contemporary dance, music and lighting—all inside a water tower 39 meters high (roughly 130 feet). She and the team wanted to create a dreamlike piece with strange visions and jaw-dropping feats by the acrobats (Sanna Vellava and Ilona Jäntti) and also make the tower itself a character instead of mere milieu for the action. Armed with this information, I started figuring out what the promotional image or images would look like.
So, I knew that the tower would have to be involved in the image somehow. Being that it's a big-ass building, it has its own usual challenges for photography: how to give a sense of scale, how to not distort it too much, how to light it etc.
But what else? Fortunately some costumes and characters were ready by the time I photographed the PR images. Hautala, a character with a giant papier-maché head, had two scenes outside the tower. First when the audience came to the performance and again when people exited the tower. The Rabbit was a mysterious character who everybody would see in the tower during the performance, but she had a secret: only two audience members per show were able to come see her exclusive scene way up in the dome of the tower.
I decided to start with portraits of the characters and kind of figure out what to do with the setting. (I also had in mind a Photoshop composite, where I would light the water tower and the characters separately, fix the camera on a tripod and combine all the exposures in post. I did try that, but it was too complicated and I nixed the idea.) I decided to fire a speedlight full blast into the door and have it over-expose, to create an explosion of white light, which turned out pretty great:
Heidi Kesti as Hautala, Pirjo Yli-Maunula as The Rabbit. I cloned out the light stand and some graffiti on the door in Photoshop.
I also decided not to have additional light for the character, so that the they are only lit by the ambient, which I under-exposed.
Backing way, way up from the water tower, I decided to have The Rabbit as a mysterious shape in the photograph, much like she would be in the piece. The backlit silhouette against the door worked well and the flash of white light would guarantee she'd be seen in the image. Then it was only a question of bringing in Hautala and lighting him, which I did from below.
We tried a few expressions for Hautala and different poses for The Rabbit:
A few examples. I also tried to light Hautala from a top angle but the low angle was better.
The camera was on a tripod so I could combine the best expression and pose later, if they happened to be in different exposures. I directed The Rabbit to change her pose every time the flash went off, because it was inconvenient to scream direction at her from that distance.
We also tried a few things with long exposure, flash and camera shake. The bedrock of fine art photography!
This shit wasn't really going anywhere, but tried it anyway for the hell of it. Heidi and Pirjo are great sports about this kind of thing!
In the end we were happy with what we got. Oh, I did gel my flashes with full color temperature orange (CTO) gels and then adjusted the white balance and saturation a bit more in post. Then Tomi Hurskainen designed the poster and boo-yah!
