The first call I got from Chad (my mentor extraordinaire) was to meet him at a small theater in about two hours. I had no idea who we were going to shoot, but I was excited. When I got to the theater there were headshots of about 20 different actresses, all rotating roles in a play called “Love, Loss, and What I Wore.” When Chad arrived he told me we’d be shooting Rhea Perlman (Taxi, Cheers etc…) and Lucy DeVito, Rhea and Danny’s daughter.
We met Rhea’s publicist and then did a quick tour of the theater to scout for shooting locations. Upstairs had these great big windows with some nice muted light coming in, so we set up a silk on a frame, tied the curtains back and did some test shots there. We figured we would shoot on stage first downstairs with the Profotos and then move upstairs for some natural light portraits.
We went back downstairs and setup two heads. Put a beauty dish with a silk on one and a softbox with a grid on the other.
When the call came that Rhea and Lucy were ready we had to carry the lights up to the stage and wasted about 5 minutes setting up and doing test shots with me as a stand-in. This would prove to be critical.
We set the beauty dish overhead and the softbox camera right a little bit over Rhea’s left shoulder.
We originally had only 10 or 15 minutes to get the shots, but the publicist managed to push back rehearsal time and get us an extra 10 minutes or so. I’ll tell you this: time flies in a photo shoot. Rhea and Lucy were great, having fun with each other, dancing, joking around and being playful. But before we knew it, time was up and Rhea called the shoot. We didn’t have time to go upstairs and do the natural light portraits, which would have been great, but it was largely our fault.
Regardless, Chad got some great images, and the Times ended up running two of them.
Lessons learned:
1. Always scout everywhere. The room upstairs with the nice light was in a different theater that we had to get the director to unlock for us. We never would have found it if we didn’t ask.
2. Setup your lights in the location you will shoot, before the shoot is going to begin.
Rhea and Lucy, Chad Batka for the New York Times
