Podcast: Embed
Subscribe: RSS | Subscribe Here
Erica chats with Ricky Stern about photographing non-wedding events like birthday parties, corporate events, etc.
- How to book
- What to expect
- Tips for shooting
- Common package additions
1 thought on “Non-wedding Event Photography (EP-52)”
Comments are closed.
Leaving this comment under just an initial – I don’t expect my boss to read IP, but in case it gets referenced by Google.
Taking photographs at your own corporate events is a really good way to gain experience. I wouldn’t dream of undercutting if they might have hired a professional, but I got to take photographs at our “practice meeting” of about 400 people last Friday in place of no photos.
If Ricky thinks that photographing corporate events is boring, I can assure him that it’s much more fun than being there and not taking photographs. Dear God, these things suck the life blood out of you, and to be able to wander around trying out wacky viewpoints and settings while your boss is droning about quarterly revenues and utilisation targets makes the day bearable. And during the breaks, wandering round taking candids of your colleagues is sooooo much better than having the same conversation again and again about what customers you’re working in and what training courses you’ve been on. I love the idea of setting up a step-and-repeat, so people can have house-style headshots: I’m not hugely experienced at this, but it would be a good way to improve.
And the lighting in these venues is uniformly dreadful. You have really, really warm ambient lighting and almost blue LCD projector screens, so end up having to close-crop the screens to colour correct the crap out of them. And the coffee/lunch areas always seem to have icky downlighters so people’s faces are either dark or lit up like Dracula. Ricky’s spot on about it being good practice in dealing with bad light. But your colleagues, used to iPhone snaps, all say “Wow, those pictures are so good” because they’ve seen themselves and their mates against a bokeh.
And there’s always the gear-head colleague who sees you taking picture and thinks you’re interested in him droning about how much he spent on high-end lenses.
So next time you’re getting bored photographing a corporate event, spare a thought for the poor schmucks who are having to sit there and not take photographs.