When I tell people I’m a professional photographer, their first question is usually, “so, do you do weddings?” It’s understandable; wedding and event photography is where most people are likely to see a professional photographer, and I booked by My First Photo Gig shooting a 50th wedding anniversary party.
Thankfully, this was less intimidating than a wedding: four hours of shooting versus eight or more, and the “bride and groom” were much more relaxed! Of course, event photography still has plenty of challenges. There’s a lot happening, a lot of people, and you don’t have much control over the light.
I had some idea of the schedule of events, and I also tried to keep the eyes in the back of my head open to what else was going on. The party was at a house with a decent-size lawn, so that meant covering the front yard, back yard, cocktail area, and a large tent.
The people were all friendly and cooperative; I tried to get a mix of posed and candid shots. The kids were a lot of fun, too, playing on a giant inflatable moon-bounce and swing set. The client had also asked me to capture the scope of the party, including people arriving and distant relatives reuniting. She also wanted some larger group portraits, which required some chaotic crowd control.
Starting on a summer afternoon and going into evening, lighting ran the full gamut. I toggled my TTL flash on and off, and alternated between a direct StoFen diffuser and bouncing off the white ceiling of the tent. Outside, the TTL tended to be an overly strong fill flash when not dialed down. Inside, the direct diffuser helped, but doesn’t get away from a very “flash” looking shot; perhaps a reflective diffuser would be better, though tougher to stuff in my pants!
Bouncing in the tent provided better light, but with two sloped ceilings and white walls, sometimes it just bounced all over. The surfaces were big enough to allow vertical shots without really needing a flash bracket, though. Shooting in RAW gave me a good bit of room for adjustment, and I tweaked the exposure and shadows in many shots.
I made a few attempts to capture motion, hand holding to about 1/5 of a second on the dance floor for a few good shots. One of the more interesting ones was a bit of a happy accident; I spun to Av instead of Tv as the ice cream truck approached, and got a really dramatic motion blur.
