Photographing Events

Photographing events can either be a very rewarding or a very tedious experience, but it is always tiring. Fortunately, a recent experience I had photographing the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) annual gala in Houston, Texas left me inspired and exhilarated.

Pre-event organization is key to a successful event. Contracts must be signed, advertising submitted, 2nd shooter (as well as a just-in-case-backup) lined up, batteries charged, lenses cleaned and compact flash cards formatted. The HRC event included well-known celebrities, including Tabatha Coffey, and I was asked to shoot not just the event, but to provide a station where portraits could be taken, which meant I needed to reserve studio lighting and make sure I had sufficient continuous 12-foot paper on the roll to use as a backdrop.


I picked up my friend, and 2nd shooter Ari, drove to the hotel and started unloading the vehicle. I had two 4’x8’ pieces of melamine board that had to carried up to the 4th floor, because they were too big to fit into the elevator.

HRC had provided a white 10‘x12’ backdrop with their logo on, and I set up the continuous paper behind the backdrop, pulled it down and under the HRC background, placed the melamine boards where I wanted people to stand (so no one would walk on and dirty or damage the white paper) and placed the lights. My idea was to light the background with 2 flash heads placed on either side of the paper and using barn doors to direct onto the background and limit the light. People would be lit using 2 umbrellas, each one facing to the opposite corner, placed slightly above so as to avoid falling shadows. I used a flash meter to make flash output to accommodate f/11 stop to minimize depth of field using ISO 200 at 1/200 sec.

I made a few adjustments to the flash heads, and then began to set up the lights that would blend the continuous paper and 10‘x12’ background only to discover that one of the two flash head extensions was missing. I could still work with one light, but the fall-off would be different to what I had envisioned. I placed the light, made sure the power pack was out of the way, went to plug in the power chord...well, there wasn’t one! My blood boiled. At this point, there was little value in pointing fingers. There was work to be done. Blame however, lay in 2 directions. While the equipment rental company hadn't packed full kits, I hadn’t checked the equipment. After all, they had never let me down in the past. Needless to say, I won't make that mistake a second time!

The shoot went off very well, except for the part where someone spilt a glass of red wine on the paper. Hotel personnel mopped up the spill quickly, but it left a huge stain which had to be removed by cloning in Photoshop, and which added at least 3 hours to the time i spent later processing the images. In retrospect, I should’ve stopped what I was doing, cut the paper, rolled out another 9 feet, smiled and restarted taking portraits.

Notwithstanding the drama, people loved having their portraits taken and the event was a huge success and I worked through the night to process the photographs. The wine-spoiled background paper meant I had a lot of post-processing. The photos were finally published to the site 3 hours later than anticipated, but the ended up costing me sales.



So, what did I learn?

1. Check and test all equipment prior to the shoot.
2. Rope off access to the set, allowing only one entrance. This will minimize accidents and ensure people do not walk on the paper thus reducing time that would be spent in post.
3. Ask organizers to place a table at the entrance to the set where people can place wine glasses, napkins, plates of food etc.
4. Have bottled water and napkins available for yourself. I perspire a lot when I shoot, and sweat pouring down your face isn't sexy.
5. If necessary, hire an assistant to tell you when you need to wipe your face, and to guide people onto the set.
6. Have plenty of business cards available. I had 300 on hand, and ran out.
7. If an accident occurs, act decisively. Stop, regroup and restart. It will save you time later on.
8. Deliver quality photographs on time and as promised.

That’s it for another week. Please leave your comments and/or horror stories.