Blog - Chris Hutcheson - Performing Arts Photographer

The Young Artists of the COC Ensemble Studio

A Lightroom preset approach to help with LED lighting issues

Lately, a number of venues around town have been switching to LED stage lighting. I've seen them at the Revival Club, Rec Room and Massey Hall so far. From a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense. One venue told me they save about $2500 a month in...

Rich Brown and the Abeng – COC Free Concert Series

Here are some images from a performance I photographed May 9, of Rich Brown and the Abeng at the Canadian Opera...

A little restoration work

I recently took on a restoration project for a friend, repairing several images of her family from the early 1900's. This was probably the most damaged of the lot with a lot of fine scratches and spots to go with larger discolouration, blemishes and tears....

Adventures in post-processing

I recently posted an image on Facebook and Instagram of the wonderful Imogen Quest. The Revival is one of my favourite clubs, Imogen is one of my favourite performers to shoot. and I particularly like to capture images of performers interacting with...

Looking back at my burlesque fine art prints

Up until 2013 I participated in several of the regular seasonal shows - The Artist Project, Riverdale Art Walk and Queen West Art Crawl in particular, as well as the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition. I'd originally shown landscape work and then switched over to the...

Tiffany Carter, burlesque legend – a photo selection

Here is a selection of my images of Tiffany Carter from a number of events, starting with the 2011 Montreal Burlesque Festival as well as Gilrlesque shows here in Toronto in 2012 and 2014. She was one of the first performers I met in Montreal that year,...

Vicky Butterfly – One of the top 50 Burlesque Performers of 2016

It's always great to see performers succeed. I particularly like it when I've been lucky enough to photograph them on the local circuit or festivals, throughout or at some point in their careers. It was a triple header in this case to have photographed...

Thank (your deity here) for Adobe Lightroom when salvaging photos

I find photographing a show is pretty straightforward now that I've been at it for about 10 years. At this point I can predict that my starting settings for a venue like the Revival Club will be about 1/200 sec at f5.6 with an ISO averaging about 3200 or...

Against the Grain Theatre presents a preview of Bound in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitiheatre

Here is a selection of my photos from December 13th's performance by members of Against the Grain Theatre at the Canadian Opera Company's Free Concert Series. I first photographed Against the Grain during their performance of Seven Deadly Sins in 2012, and since then,...

Kitten DeVille at the 2014 Toronto Burlesque Festival

Here's a selection of images from my work at the 2014 Toronto Burlesque Festival. This time I'm focusing on Los Angeles performer Kitten DeVille, who appeared in Friday and Saturday night shows. I've found that the more of a story or characterization there is to the...

Case Air Wireless – Tethering and Camera Control System

I've been sporadically trying to set up a working wireless tethering system using my Nikon camera for several years. Nikon makes several wireless attachments, with their WT-5 being the one created specifically for use with my D4. At $800 CDN, though it's overkill for...