Empolga às 9 | Teatro Odisséia

I think now I'd have to take my shoes and socks off to count how many times I've photographed at the Teatro Odisséia.  Actually, I think I'd run out of fingers and toes.  My friend Magali, the singer with her hands up in the air like she just don't care, is recording a CD and is looking for images to put in the jacket.  So, she invited me to go photograph her show - I thought ...hmmm, Odisséia again??  Well, I went, because it presents an interesting challenge to my creativity - how to get a new image out of an old place and a band that I've already photographed many times over?  Or... how can I take an existing idea that was pretty good and make it into something spectacular.  

I've always found that the light at Odisséia difficult to work with... the stage is small and with these big block style bands it makes things real tight - which makes for messy looking photographs.  Using strobes is rarely a good idea, but sometimes you don't have any choice.  I'm striving to find a way to use them in a natural way ...  

Odisséia has two floors and you can go up on the second floor and have a bird's eye view of the band.  You can also go behind the band and with a really wide angle lens get a great shot of the whole group and the croud.   It's a shot that I've already taken a zillion times and I've never been quite happy with the light on the crowd, so I decided to see if using a remote flash would help things at all.  So I bribed a friend with a free ticket and he went and held my flash for me.  I'm pretty happy with the result but I retain my beliefs that using flashes in shows should be avoided unless you've got no choice.  Simplicity is bliss, isn't it? 

So, is it possible to go back to an old place and get a fresh perspective?  What are the limits of your own creativity?  Do you find yourself taking the same pictures, repeating the same lines?  Sometimes it's good to go back to an old place and try a variation or something completely new!