Photographing the San Francisco Opera - Behind the Images
Photographing an Institution
The San Francisco Opera is one of the largest opera companies in North America - founded in 1923, second in size only to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and home to some of the most ambitious productions in the Western hemisphere. To work inside that institution as a photographer is to operate at a particular level of expectation. The standard is set before you walk through the door.
Over the past several years I've had the opportunity to photograph the San Francisco Opera across multiple contexts - production coverage, editorial portraiture, and artist profiles - with the resulting images placed in publications ranging from the Mercury News to San Francisco Classical Voice to Duclos Cultural Currents.
Three Placements, Three Different Contexts
When the San Francisco Opera returned to live performance in August 2021 with Tosca - its first live production after the pandemic shutdown - the Mercury News ran the story with my image as the lead photo. That placement was a document of a specific cultural moment: the return of live opera to the War Memorial Opera House after an absence that had lasted more than a year.
Eun Sun Kim, Music Director of the San Francisco Opera, at the War Memorial Opera House. Published as lead photo in the Mercury News.
Eun Sun Kim solo San Francisco Opera Music Director Eun Sun Kim at the War Memorial Opera House. Image published as the lead photo credit for SF Opera Returns to Live Performances with Tosca in the Mercury News.
San Francisco Classical Voice used my work as the hero image for their feature looking back at the Opera's history as the company prepared to mark its centennial. The 100th anniversary piece required an image that carried institutional weight - something that read as historic without being static.
Eun Sun Kim and General Director Matthew Shilvock outside the War Memorial Opera House. Published as hero image for SF Opera Prepares to Turn 100 on San Francisco Classical Voice.
Eun Sun Kim + Matthew Shilvock San Francisco Opera Music Director Eun Sun Kim and General Director Matthew Shilvock outside the War Memorial Opera House. Image published as the hero photo for SF Opera Prepares to Turn 100on San Francisco Classical Voice.
Those two placements represent the editorial function at its most direct: a photograph that serves a story, that anchors a piece of journalism and gives it visual credibility.
The Schwabacher Recital Series and John Churchwell
The third context is more intimate. Duclos Cultural Currents, Paul Duclos's Bay Area classical music publication, used my portrait of John Churchwell - San Francisco Opera's Head of Music Staff - to illustrate their preview of the Schwabacher Recital Series. The Schwabacher, now in its fourth decade, is presented by the SF Opera Center and the Merola Opera Program, and features emerging and established artists in recital settings at the Taube Atrium Theater and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
John Churchwell is not a performer in the conventional sense - he's the musical infrastructure of the company. He has assisted on more than 140 productions, collaborated with conductors including Eun Sun Kim, Nicola Luisotti, and Donald Runnicles, and co-directs the Lehrer Vocal Institute at the Music Academy of the West. Photographing someone in that role means finding the image that represents authority without formality, and connection to the music without the instrument.
John Churchwell John Churchwell, Head of Music Staff at the San Francisco Opera, photographed in the lobby of the War Memorial Opera House. Portrait commissioned for the Schwabacher Recital Series preview on Duclos Cultural Currents.
What It Takes to Photograph Opera
Opera as a subject is demanding in specific ways. The scale of the War Memorial Opera House - the architecture, the backstage infrastructure, the sheer number of people involved in mounting a production - means that editorial work here is almost always environmental. You are rarely shooting in isolation. The space is part of the image.
The productions themselves are fast-moving and technically complex. Stage lighting is designed for the audience, not the camera. Rehearsals give access that performances don't, but with a different energy. The portrait sessions - one-on-one with a conductor, a pianist, a soprano - require the opposite of all that: stillness, compression, the ability to find something legible in a quiet frame.
What holds all of it together is knowing the institution well enough to understand what each image needs to do. A lead photo for a news story about reopening is not the same as a hero image for a centennial retrospective, which is not the same as a portrait accompanying a recital preview. Each context has its own logic. The photographer's job is to serve that logic while making something worth looking at.
Eun Sun Kim inside the War Memorial Opera House. Published by Grammy.com, Good Morning America, San Francisco Classical Voice, and Ultraschall Berlin upon her appointment as Music Director.
The interior portrait of Eun Sun Kim - shot inside the War Memorial Opera House with her baton, the house chandeliers behind her - was published by Grammy.com and Good Morning America, San Francisco Classical Voice, and Ultraschall Berlin, alongside coverage of her appointment as Music Director.
Marc Olivier Le Blanc is a San Francisco editorial and portrait photographer specializing in performing arts and cultural institutions across the Bay Area. Get in touch to discuss editorial photography for arts organizations.
