A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION
When my dear friend Tony Axtell told he was going to be running the in house sound for A Prairie Home Companion, I was pretty impressed. But considering his well known talent and living in the Twin Cities (PHC is based in St. Paul) I guess it wasn't to big of a surprise. It wasn't to long after Tony started with PHC that he invited me to spend a weekend hanging out during the rehearsals and the show. It was pretty strange to be back stage and in the green room with the people whom I'd become a big fan of over the years. But everyone was so down home nice that after just a few visits to the show the cast and crew started welcoming me by name.
After hanging with the show a few times in St. Paul, at the Fitzgerald theater, I was invited out on one of their New York runs. As it turned out they had no one to shoot photos of the show that Saturday for their website. Now any number of the crew, right down to Russ Ringsak, their longtime truck driver, can shoot the show but there just wasn't anybody around. By the way, Russ does a darn nice job with the camera. So Tony says, "Why not let Jeff shoot, he's a photographer that's what he does". Apparently I did okay for that was the beginning of a nearly ten year stint of shooting PHC shows when I was available.
During a show there could be two or more photographers and about a dozen or so images would be used on the website. I myself would take all the RAW images home, go through them and find the best 15 or 20 shots, tweak them up nice and email them down to St. Paul, and they'd pick the ones they wanted to share on the site. Because there would be more than one shooter, I may only get 4 or 8 slots on the site depending on their final choices, meaning many of my edited shots that I submitted have never before been seen by the public. This is why I wanted to share this massive gallery to show off the magic that was and very much still is A Prairie Home Companion.
Please note that these images are copyright protected. These images are not in anyway for sale and are only here for your viewing pleasure. Think of it as a PHC photo history museum.
When my dear friend Tony Axtell told he was going to be running the in house sound for A Prairie Home Companion, I was pretty impressed. But considering his well known talent and living in the Twin Cities (PHC is based in St. Paul) I guess it wasn't to big of a surprise. It wasn't to long after Tony started with PHC that he invited me to spend a weekend hanging out during the rehearsals and the show. It was pretty strange to be back stage and in the green room with the people whom I'd become a big fan of over the years. But everyone was so down home nice that after just a few visits to the show the cast and crew started welcoming me by name.
After hanging with the show a few times in St. Paul, at the Fitzgerald theater, I was invited out on one of their New York runs. As it turned out they had no one to shoot photos of the show that Saturday for their website. Now any number of the crew, right down to Russ Ringsak, their longtime truck driver, can shoot the show but there just wasn't anybody around. By the way, Russ does a darn nice job with the camera. So Tony says, "Why not let Jeff shoot, he's a photographer that's what he does". Apparently I did okay for that was the beginning of a nearly ten year stint of shooting PHC shows when I was available.
During a show there could be two or more photographers and about a dozen or so images would be used on the website. I myself would take all the RAW images home, go through them and find the best 15 or 20 shots, tweak them up nice and email them down to St. Paul, and they'd pick the ones they wanted to share on the site. Because there would be more than one shooter, I may only get 4 or 8 slots on the site depending on their final choices, meaning many of my edited shots that I submitted have never before been seen by the public. This is why I wanted to share this massive gallery to show off the magic that was and very much still is A Prairie Home Companion.
Please note that these images are copyright protected. These images are not in anyway for sale and are only here for your viewing pleasure. Think of it as a PHC photo history museum.