29 April 2016

Photographing the Moscow State Circus

This week I had the privilege of photographing the Moscow State Circus.  The first was at a press call where a couple of the acts (the tightrope artist and a quartet of jugglers) performed their acts.

While at the press call I was offered complimentary tickets to one of the shows, which I gracelessly accepted.  Big thanks to Marnie for the hook up!  The tickets turned out to be the best seats in the house, front row centre and ringside.   Most excellent!

Photographing performers is always made that bit more fun when you've met your subjects, namely the two main characters, Wizard Wako and Zhenya (thank you to them for signing my print!).  Being so close to the action meant for most of the time I was shooting in the 24-80mm range, wide open at f/2.8, with ISO's varying from 200 to 3200 for the faster moving moments.  This is what keeps me so interested in photography, the challenge of shooting challenging subjects like this.

The show was a mixture of hugely talented performers; acrobats, jugglers, contortionists, but sadly no tightrope artist as she was injured the day before (hope you recover quickly Olga!).  Combine that with a little bit of panto style over acting (in a good way), and some genuinely funny moments (that's not Egypt!), and what results is a really rather bloody good show.

Should you get the chance, go and see them.











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