Leon Trotsky with a mountaineer's axe smashed into

Away from the recent autumnal landscapes and possible firework displays, it was back to 'work', photographing a staged rehearsal specially, for me to get some official promo shots. My title would have gone on to include 'his skull', but I ran out of room. They are the actual words used in the play.

The show was 'An Evening of David Ives' at Salisbury's Studio Theatre, by Ripped Script Theatre Co and after an intense 20 mins of an abridged summary of all four acts, that I frenetically snapped away at, the cast limbered up, warmed and did some weird routines (wished I could have snapped them, too!) and shortly afterwards, the public were allowed in, for an almost sold-out show, of which of course I had to enjoy!

This was the very last shot, just downloaded and a little shadow detail extracted from the RAW file. I could have chosen any number of those taken but this one seemed to sum up both the flavour of the material and my take on it - slightly off-kilter and a bit unusual. It was as good as any and a late night and my pizza in the oven about done means I didn't want to spend much time on getting today's blip up.

Despite taking also my fast 85mm f1.8 and 70-200mm f2.8, I used only the Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 throughout as it was an intimate setting and the focal range just about adequate on the DX format D7000 (eqv. 36-105mm). I set underexposure at minus 1 stop throughout, with the white balance on Auto and from which I didn't need to make any correction.