Problem
Your three main problems, er, nine main problems, make that eleven, are:
1 Timing
2 Getting near enough to take photos
3 Getting good poses - interesting pictures
4 Lighting and Angles
5 Permission to photograph places, events and people
6 People who don't want to be on Facebook or the internet
7 Remembering names for captions
8 Getting credit for your photos
9 People online who don't switch on their camera
10 Privacy of identity
11 Revealing that few of you attended
1 Arrive Early
You want a nearby parking place so you are not taking heavy bags a long distance.
You want the venue looking pristine before people arrive and obscure features or stand with their back to you or making funny faces, running about creating blur.
You need time to establish goodwill. Get a seat near the front or side, or a place in the aisle (without obstructing fire exits and doors).
Take photos of VIPs because they will be surrounded by well-wishers later
Getting Near
If you have a zoom lens and tripod, arrive early, ask where the chairperson or president will be standing or sitting on stage so you can choose where to position yourself. You can move freestanding chairs to get in a better position.
2 Early Photos
Take an early photo, ideally of somebody standing on stage and sitting in the audience, preferably a VIP, failing that any willing bystander. This will show you if the area is visible.
You will notice any annoying obstructions such as trailing wires, or stacked chairs. Advertisements for other events (which can be removed during your event and replaced), religious messages in a hall attached to a religious building, distracting children's drawings, or fire hydrants. You might wish to move so as to focus on the centre of the stage.
Also notice chairs vacated by the president and left empty with papers, bags in the aisle or on chairs.
If the front row is empty, I ask members of the audience to move forward.
Lights
If you have not enough light, you could turn on some lights.
If you have too much light, and you get glare from a window behind the stage, or people turned into black silhouettes against a white background, move to one side, or get separate photos of people standing with certificates at the other side of the hall.
Smiling Before And After
Take contestants before the event in case they leave at the half-way interval. They may also be smiling, confident, standing upright at the start. This will be the flattering photo to show, rather than one of them looking glum or slumped after they learn they did not win first place.
Conversely, you might find that your winner looked anxious before the contest, but jubilant afterwards.
You might think to ask the losers to congratulate the winners. Also tell the winners to tell the losers that they gave great speeches (or painted great paintings or made tasty and amusing cakes - whatever the event). You might also add your own praises to the 'losers'. You can then photograph all the participants together looking happy.
Photo Editing
To save time, spin through all your photos and delete blanks and accidents on both the original mobile phone or camera and any editing device with a larger screen.
You might immediately select one, two, three of the best photos to send immediately to your website or the local newspaper. This will help you catch deadlines.
If the event is a family and friends affair, such as a wedding, anniversary or reunion, you can share with family members before they go home.
Save any programme or agenda of the event and tick or star the people you have photographed.
Some photographers, on an event shoot, list every photo taken in a notebook. They have columns with the photo number, the event number, the names of the people in the photo, the place, time of day, correct title.
Numbering storing and indexing prints
I visited the home of the head of a New Zealand photographic society. He had all his photos stacked on shelves in shoe boxes going back several decades. Every photo was stored numerically by date order. He had books of indexes by subject, so he could find a waterfall, or local shop owner, or boat race, in different years.
Disasters
Many people get cross about photos of disasters. However, you may be doing the victims a favour if your photo can identify who is at fault and help a victim claim compensation, or if they were accused of wrongdoing, prove they were not guilty.
Happy Events
Even if there's an official photographer, your extra photos may be welcome. The official photographer might take mainly the VIP family. You might take the aunt in the corner, the boss who arrived late, the dog, or the dessert. If there's a dispute with a photographer, or a disaster with the photographer's equipment, your photos could be a handy backup. Even if the bride is happy to pay for the large photos, you might have some small ones for yourself and guests with a lower budget.
In the event that the official photos are lost during house moves, it can be handy to have duplicates of the official and unofficial photos.
Historic Family Photos
Duplicate wedding photos kept by others are useful at the time - and years later.
I went to the 80th birthday party of an elderly great-aunt. Her nephew, who I hardly knew showed me a lot of photos of people I didn't know. Then he produced a wartime (WWII) wedding photo and said, "I don't know who these people are. Do you know them?"
I gasped, "That's my parents - their wedding photo! In World War Two. Before I was born. I don't have that photo."
My distant relative didn't know the people, or even that it was a wedding photo.
I knew. "It's their wedding. I can tell by my father's clothes and the flower."
"But she's not wearing white."
Wartime Wedding Story From A Photo
"They are both wearing hats, and my father is wearing a top hat, and they both have a flower. It's not her first wedding, but her second wedding, so white would not have been considered suitable. Her first husband died in a plane shot down at El Alamein. She married my father towards the end of the war, when there was clothes rationing. Some brides had white dresses made out of parachute silk from used parachutes. She wouldn't have wanted that, even if she could have afforded it, because any reminder of planes would have been too upsetting. So she's wearing a sensible suit in dark material which she could use again."
"Would you like the photo?" He handed it to me. I was so happy. Thank you to the photographer who printed so many duplicates, to the family who kept them, to the descendant who was able to give it to me.
Making Friends With Official Photographers
Make friends with the photographer. The photographer is often ignored and avoided. They might be glad of a chance to talk, or have a request. You can give each other names of the VIPs, work out timing, position yourselves to not get in each other's way,
At a presentation of awards find out if the event organisers have asked you not to use flash, and how to get around restrictions.
Make Friends With Event Organisers
There may be a sign saying no photography. That might mean you cannot photograph the statues and ornaments in a religious or historic building because the venue sells their own photos. They might be or afraid of photographers acting on behalf of burglars. However, the organisers might be happy for you to take photos of people at the event.
Maybe the historic statue is OK to photograph but not the company logo which is a trademark. On the other hand, you might be forbidden to photograph the valuable painting on the wall behind you, but the organisers might be delighted to have publicity for their logo, their event, or flyers for their future events.
Conversely, the organisers may have an exclusive arrangement with a photographic society to take and sell photos of VIPs at the event, but you may be free to photograph the outside and inside of the building and your own family in the building, or on their own with certificates in a corner.
You might also be allowed to take photos before the event, of the building and the audience, or during the interval, or upstairs at the reception, or of a bride and ring after the wedding ceremony.
Organising Posing and Photos
You can brief the chairperson to ask recipients of certificates to turn to face the audience, not stand talking with their back to the audience.
The chairperson can also announce in advance: "I'm going to ask everybody to come up, one by one, and stay on stage for a group photo."
I ask people to keep their hands still. I also ask, everybody face the front. I also say: One, two, three.
Another useful message is:
Please don't take photos during the singing. The choir will pose for photos in a big group at the end, and individually during the interval.
Editing
You can either go through each photo and correct every aspect of that photo. Then mark which photo is best.
Or select the best photos and edit only the best ones.
Or edit all photos for brightness, or automatic enhancement, or vertical alignment, or cut out empty foreground, crop to enlarge the people.
Selfies
Remember to take yourself at an event. You can take a selfie, or ask another person to photograph you. This is useful for your cv, your business, your blog, your family and friends, or as a record of everybody at the event.
Captions
I like to caption all photos the evening of the day I took them with the aid of my event agenda, on the back of which I write the spelling of names and nicknames. Sometimes a long name is on the agenda but Stephen Michael Horphin prefers to be captioned with the name everybody knows, Steve or a jokey nickname or caption, 'Speedy' Steve.
It's lovely afterwards to be told:
'You take great photographs.' (Thanks for telling me that, Gill.)
'You make me look good.' (Thanks for saying that, Shan.)
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
