ORIENTAL THEATRE

Each September Milwaukee holds a weekend event, known as Doors Open Milwaukee, inviting interested persons to visit various venues throughout the metro area, many of which are not generally open to the public or not open just for curious visitors.  For the past several years, whenever I have been in town during the event I have visited a number of the venues with my camera.

This year one of the venues was the Oriental Theatre.  Built in the 1920s, the venue was opened as a "movie palace" with East Indian decor.  Like most older movie houses, it was built to accommodate perhaps 1500 patrons, including both main floor and a balcony.  More recently, in an effort to keep up with modern multiplex cinema venues, the theater was divided into three auditoriums so that multiple movies could be shown at the same time.

A couple of years ago, I had talked with personnel at the theater about photographing the facility's interior and had been told that that was not feasible.  So I was excited to learn that the Oriental was going to be part of this fall's Doors Open event.  The description for the venue included the fact that the theater's lights would be on so that visitors could see what the decor looked like.  That is not what happened.

The lobby area was lit as it normally is during showtimes, which is to say a typical interior space--dim.  I did get a few shots of the East Indian motif, including elephants and lions.

Not terrible; not great.

The main auditorium was another story.  The lighting was, as far as I could tell, at the same level as during a movie, in other words, extremely dark.

I took this shot from the balcony.  I had to shoot it at a high ISO and a long exposure, specifically, three seconds.  Hand held.  To give an idea, I did not know that the color of the area above the stage was in the red end of the spectrum until I reviewed the actual shot.

John