Event Photography
Event photography is almost as tension filled as wedding photography. You get one shot at it and it has to be right. Admittedly, the advent of digital photography has made this much easier. However, on the day you need to be prepared and have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, otherwise, before you know it, the event is over and you haven’t achieved what you wanted.
Recently, I photographed the TedX Byron Bay event. If you want to see some truly inspiring 18 minute presentations by some of the best minds in the world, check it out - www.ted.com.
One of the main challenges I had with this event was the lighting. It was a fabulous event and the lighting was focused on the speakers, so it made my job pretty difficult.
There is always a compromise in this instance. Either the foreground (i.e. the speaker) is correctly lit and exposed, or the background is. In the case of an event like this one, the answer was easy - the speaker was the priority.
It then meant that I needed to photograph the venue on its own before anyone arrived, as it would not feature much after that, as it would appear in darkness in the photos.
Lighting is the single most important aspect in photography. You need adequate light, and if you don’t have it, either move to another location (which isn’t very often possible), add more light (as in studio lights, building lights, or flash), or compromise the background.
The other issue with lighting is the colour cast that the artificial lighting is producing. Here is a shot where the tungsten lighting is producing an orangey cast, and my flash is producing a white cast in the foreground. It’s not ideal, but provides an example of the impact of light.
So, control the event lighting as much as possible, and if you can’t, you’ll just have to think laterally and potentially be creative…