the beginnings of event photography
lilrsd
Registered Users Posts: 2 Beginner grinner
Hello All,
A little background...
I was recently asked to shoot a couple of events for my friend's event planning company and am thinking of eventually doing this for work. At this point I am not getting paid for it but using it as GREAT practice and networking.
I have a BFA in photography, which I did entirely in film, so taking shots is comfortable for me (although still a little rocky with the flash(SB-600) I now have (and used) a Nikon D200 and am using PS CS2 (and Camera Raw 3.7 for uploading RAW... which I've never done until this last event:dunno)
I am just starting to go through the pictures and am feeling a little overwhelmed with questions ... so if anyone has any tips for the following question, that would be great, and much appreciated!:D
1.How much processing should be done... should I be mastering each shot that I am sending? Cropping, dodging/burning, bringing out the whites in the eyes.... or just focusing on the exposure being correct?
2. I cant believe I am asking this, but if there is a great photo of most of the people in the picture, but one person has their eyes closed or is doing something off, do I still send it as an option?
3. In what way should I give them the photos, on cd or use something like the smugmug gallery? What if they want to use them for their web page?
4. If I send them a cd, should I be sending them as jpeg, or tiff? Should I be worried about copyright issues?
5. What size, resolution should they be?
6. Should I change the label of the picture so it is not the applied label?
7. In the RAW photoshop page, which color system do I apply? (Adobe RGB, Colormatch RGB, ProPhoto RGB, SRGB?)
Well, that is all I can think of for now.
Thank you so much for your time and help!
A little background...
I was recently asked to shoot a couple of events for my friend's event planning company and am thinking of eventually doing this for work. At this point I am not getting paid for it but using it as GREAT practice and networking.
I have a BFA in photography, which I did entirely in film, so taking shots is comfortable for me (although still a little rocky with the flash(SB-600) I now have (and used) a Nikon D200 and am using PS CS2 (and Camera Raw 3.7 for uploading RAW... which I've never done until this last event:dunno)
I am just starting to go through the pictures and am feeling a little overwhelmed with questions ... so if anyone has any tips for the following question, that would be great, and much appreciated!:D
1.How much processing should be done... should I be mastering each shot that I am sending? Cropping, dodging/burning, bringing out the whites in the eyes.... or just focusing on the exposure being correct?
2. I cant believe I am asking this, but if there is a great photo of most of the people in the picture, but one person has their eyes closed or is doing something off, do I still send it as an option?
3. In what way should I give them the photos, on cd or use something like the smugmug gallery? What if they want to use them for their web page?
4. If I send them a cd, should I be sending them as jpeg, or tiff? Should I be worried about copyright issues?
5. What size, resolution should they be?
6. Should I change the label of the picture so it is not the applied label?
7. In the RAW photoshop page, which color system do I apply? (Adobe RGB, Colormatch RGB, ProPhoto RGB, SRGB?)
Well, that is all I can think of for now.
Thank you so much for your time and help!
0
Comments
I weed out at least half of all frames taken and do basic white balance, auto-levels/tone and simple cropping on those that survive. Then I find maybe the top 20% and spend a few more minutes on each one doing a slightly better job on the color. Stick with sRGB unless they ask you for something else. Stick with JPEGs unless they ask for TIFFs. How much is your free time worth?
For my friends, I don't worry about copyright. I usually just put up the pictures on SmugMug as a private but non-password protected gallery so they can share it with their friends. My public images are licensed creative commons with attribution, for non-commercial use only. Since you're doing this for a company, I think you should tag the images with appropriate copyright meta-data at the very least; this is very easy in Bridge/Lightroom/PhotoMechanic/etc. If they want to use it for their advertising, that says your work is good enough for them and I would think you'd want to be paid for that work with appropriate usage rights. This seems more flexible than simply transferring your copyright over to them and not getting paid. Personally, I don't feel there is any harm in getting paid if they're happy with the results, even though you're learning.
Perhaps this is better for the Big Picture forum. There's probably a lot to be discovered via searching too. Good luck!
First can you be more clear about when you are shooting the events, who is the end customer of the pictures, the event planning company, the attendees, both, other, etc. That I believe can have impact the potential answers to the questions. Can we see examples of the event pics to help us see what type of event it is and the images you are getting.
Let me share what little I know:
1. There's no one answer for this one. It depends on how good of a shot you're starting with, so the amount of time you spend on each will vary even within a single shoot. I am using Lightroom exclusively now and have a standard develop setting I use at import that does an auto tone, bumps the vibrance and boosts the sharpening from the LR default. I then go from there paring down my keepers before spending any time on individual shots. One thing to keep in mind is, the better the shot is out of the camera, the less work you're going to have to do on post processing. Over time this fact alone will motivate you more than anything.
The bottom line is, you need to be willing to put your name on it. If it's a wedding you're going to spend much more time on each than you would for a kid's birthday party or a youth sports event.
2. Kelby offered a great tip that I use all the time with great success. Have everyone close their eyes and then call for them to open them and shoot the shot. Even then I always take more than one shot. PS3's new layer stack features will allow you to more easily pick faces from multiple shots of a group so you can pick the ones where eyes are open. Of course this won't work if someone NEVER has their eyes open.
3. If it were me, I'd bite the bullet and get a pro smugmug acct. Then you can maintain control of your shots and set your prices as you choose. The problem with CDs is that once they possess the photos, they can print them on a crappy printer, send them to a substandard lab, etc. You need to protect your reputation and if they are showing people lousy prints that aren't your work and telling them you took the shots, your reputation will suffer.
7. I export ProPhotoRGB from my RAW software (Lightroom) for photos I plan to print myself. This is a subject that's debated constantly, but I've done tests on my HP B9180 printer between sRGB, AdobeRGB and ProPhotoRGB, and the wider gamut of the ProPhoto is a clear winner. For the shots you intend to upload to smugmug, you want to ALWAYS use sRGB. RAW processors such as Lightroom and Bibble are invaluable for this type of scenario since they allow you to save different export settings for each destination.
Finally, since you're going pro, make sure you have a calibration tool for your monitor (I use Spyder2PRO, but there are others just as good) and if you choose to do any of your own printing, learn the ins-and-outs of end-to-end color management and apply to your workflow.
Make sure to read the smugmug help pages on getting good prints from their lab. They are invaluable.
Rich
To answer some questions...
I shot two events through March that will be looked at by the organizations/attendees that were haveing the events... for example, the second one was a private school who was celebrating their 40th anniversery and annual fundraiser. They held it in a club in San Francisco called Bimbos 365. It is a very dark, but great venue.
I ended up putting the pictures onto my smugmug page, in a private gallery for the organization to view them... the link is
http://kmunger.smugmug.com/gallery/2674879#141622407
and the password is...
urban school
if you would like to take a look, I would love some feedback on the images as well. I just started using a flash, so I feel a little shakey with it and have not had much time for practice. When I was working on the images in photoshop, I spent most of my time trying to correct for faces being blown out.
Also, more of a general question, am getting the right idea as to what kind of photos to be taking at an event? As I was going through them, I kind of felt like they were all the same, just different people. (maybe that is just event photography though)
Thanks again for taking the time to help me out!
1. as little post as possible. shoot jpg and aim to get the exposure, cropping and wb as accurate as possible. if you start getting into this for real, you will have a ton of pictures to get through. and the money is in the shooting, not the post.
2. always shoot 2-3 pictures of groups. in a pinch, you can replace a face in post to get a good one of everyone.
3. my clients usually want a dvd of the images. just charge accordingly. often if i put together a gallery of the images that folks can purchase from, they will post my gallery on their website. i get some secondary sales that way. always take people's cards if they ask "will i be able to see the pictures?". then you email them once they're up. i find handing out cards to be much less effective.
4. deliver jpg's. no one wants giant tiff files. only send tiff's if they have picked out a picture for publication, and then only if it's a full page. and your contract should cover how they can use the images and that you ultimately own them.
5. Find out where the images will end up and shoot the smallest files possible.
6. i don't know what you mean by label
7. never raw. unless i'm in a situation with a dynamic range i can't capture, i'll shoot off a couple of raw and go right back to jpg/medium/fine (d2x). in only shoot raw for my fine art work and maybe some wedding situations. i don't find the event work justifies that type of high touch post processing.
My favorite event tools for speedy post processing:
Photo Mechanic - the fastest jpg viewer/weeder I have found. WAY faster than lightroom or bridge
DxO Optics Premium - awesome batch post
betterfilerename - it just is
Also, I looked at your gallery. The one suggestion I would make is to drag your shutter speed a little and get some more ambient light. Even in a really dark location, you can often find light to mix in in the background if you pay attention to which direction you are pointing.
Best of luck in your venture!
Trish
1. As little as possible, the better more efficient you are in taking better pics, and the less time you spend post processing, the greater your pay per hour is. As recommended by another poster, upgrade to a pro account. A couple of benefits, you can set a proof delay that allows you to adjust an image after ordered and replace it with the adjusted image before printed. You can also adjust the crop without having to replace the image. Also with printing through smugmug they do an excellent job with the images that need some help. This can save you an immense amount of time. This has been awesome for me, especially for weddings. Of the 1000 - 1500 images I usually shoot, tweaking them all took an immense amount of time. Most are pretty close to what I want to see and are good enough to decide to order from or not, but now that I can upload and then tweak them when ordered it saves me a ton of time and the client gets to see the images much sooner. And another benefit is to make a profit on the prints and to track and see if and what people are buying as well as watermarking and other protections. You may have a pro account, but I didn't see any pro features in use.
2. Sure why not. People blink, it happens all the time. If its 5 or more people in a picture you can almost guarantee that one person is gonna blink. My general rule is when I can't easily seen on the review screen if all the people in the pictures eyes are open I take 2 or more images of the group. 5-8 people I usually take 2. 9 or more at least 3. Over 15 then I will usually shoot 4 or 5. It takes less time to take a second pic than to zoom in on the screen and check everybody's eyes.
3. Since you said that you didn't get paid for this job, I would only sell prints via smugmug. What I find for events they want someone to take good images to record the event, and mainly the people in attendance and to have the images available to the attendees (from my event photo experience, about 6 years). They may want to use the images for publicity, etc for future or repeat events. This is pretty negotiatable and their are other threads here on dgrin that go more into that.
4. For most jpg would be fine.
5. Depends on the intended use.
6. Not sure I understand this question. Are you asking about a caption, a filename, a keyword, what?
7. Stick with sRGB. Not many instances for the use in other color spaces, especially for an event photographer. Here and there at weddings I shoot RAW but never for other events. Again post processing time.
Pretty good for the images. But I look at some of the images and ask myself "Why would someone want that image?" But not being there at the event, knowing the organization, I wouldn't. But people sometimes do want pics of the decorations, band, etc. But I find over 95% of the pics are gonna be of the people. Also push yourself to take 80 pics an hour. In event photography volume is important. If I haven't take 250 pics in 2 hours I feel that I didn't do well. My record is about 750 images in just over 3 hours.
Get a setting that works for you and that you can stick with. Amazingly all of the images in these 2 galleries below had zero post processing for the exposure of the images.
Someone above mentioned dragging the shutter to get more background. I believe the opposite for event photos. Most time people don't want the clutter of other people in the background, the walls, etc.
http://www.snapsterfoto.com/gallery/2484629 no password
http://www.snapsterfoto.com/gallery/2242871 password cotillion
That was me with the dragging shutter comment. That's a good point you're making. You need to also consider your audience in your shooting style.
I'm hired by the folks who put on the event and they want to see the room design, some ambiance, decorations, and a crowded venue. Definitely some "happy people" pictures, but in context that can be used for future marketing. (examples)
If you're audience is the attendees, I imagine you're more focused on photographing the attendees in a way that would inspire them to purchase prints.
cheers,
Trish
Yes I agree that if the folks who put on the event want shots of that type, then do it. I guess my point was, know who is the end user of the images and cater to what they would want and need.
Great advice here people. Helped me set a more organized plan for future events. My question is How exactly Do I capture the beautiful ambient light and get a good exposure on the people?
Sometimes I get lucky, but most of the times I don't. Either I get blurry pictures, underexposed with a bit of background, all ambient drowned out and people look over exposed (not in an event setting at all) or my favorite people properly exposed surrounded by blackness.
High ISO, a large aperature(ie 2.8) and some fill flash.
Man you dug up an old thread. I had completely forgotten about this thread. I was reading a few posts and then realized, I was reading what I had written.
There are all kinds of ways to get good consistent exposures. Practice and experiment.
Here's what I do for most dark indoor event situations. Set my camera to manual and my aperature 5.6. Set ISO to at least 400. If the exposure reads less than 1/30 sec shutter speed, set the shutter speed to 1/30. Set my flash to TTL exposure. An on camera flash has the widest range of flexibility at aperature 5.6, so it will most often be accurately exposed. Plus, you'll have enough depth of field to get small groups.
If it's a really dark room, try to position yourself so there is some light in the frame behind the subjects. Even light on the ceiling helps keep the photo from looking like you're in a cave.
Here are a couple from an event last week. Examples of finding light in the room behind the subjects. Both are 1/30 & f5.6 & TTL flash. ISO 640 & 500 respectively:
Have fun out there!
Trish
That is definitely true. RAW gives you more flexibility to be a little off and save more pictures. But I'll tell you my dirtly little secret. I stll find a lot of value shooting in jpg.
More than half my event jobs require next day turnaround, or even a CD burned onsite immediately following. For those I shoot jpg. Not even jpg large. They appreciate not getting those really large files. They use them for web posting or publishing in articles or newsletters. Rarely a full page glossy, but when needed, the files are still big enough for that.
It's a funny thing, me walking around with my big pro camera disabling all the features so I can take snapshots. But it's a living.
I do use RAW for my fine art work and studio work.
Don't tell anyone!!
Trish