For those new photographers out there… a little advice. If you are doing event photography and you are in a building where the lighting is completely different every 10 feet, you can do one of 2 things. Well OK, you can do a few things actually.
1. I do not approve of this but if you are really new and “shooting for a favor” or something like that, switch to automatic. If you have a nice camera, let it do the work for you. Focus on capturing the good moments. My one piece of advice if this is really how you are gonna roll… don’t use a flash if you don’t have too. Stick to the spots that have bright windows or good lighting. Make sure your subjects are mostly facing the light. *cringe*
2. The slightly lesser evil to automatic. Shutter or aperture priority. If you are outside and everything is bright and sunny, shoot your subjects in bright shade! If they are not in bright shade, ask them to step a few feet into it. (remember this advice is for newer photographers who don’t have the fancy gear like off camera flashes and reflectors and such.) If you are in bright shade or, ug, direct sunlight, set your ISO to 200. Put the camera on the “S” setting and set your shutter speed to 200. Easy to remember right? s(sun) 200/200. The camera will take care of the aperture for you. If DOF is your preference, set the camera to “A” and choose the f/stop to your preference. Bright light… go with 4 or 5 maybe? The camera will choose the shutter speed for you. If I had to pick, I would go with shutter priority because I don’t want blurry photos because my camera chose a low shutter speed! Just sayin…
3. You know what you are doing, you are quick to adjust your shutter speed and you are not worried about missing shots while you wander between the dark and the light. Good for you! I like to torture myself too, LOL! Pick a middle ISO like 400 or 600. (If you know you are going to walk into REALLY dark areas, go as high as 800. Make your f/stop number as low of a number as the lens you area using goes because DOF is AWESOME!!! (My favorite lens is a 35 prime with a f/1.8) Get your thumb ready to wind back and forth as you wander.
4. The best thing to do. Decide what type of light you like to shoot in and mingle in that area. Let your subjects come to you. Call them over for a photo op if you have to! Next Disco Brunch, this is my plan of action! I love the light in this pic…
Here is where we get into some rules and I will probably touch on this in more detail eventually in future posts. To some photographers this image might not be “correct” because a part of the photo is blown out/over exposed. This is OK. Your style is what you choose it to be. The faces are exposed correctly and the edges of the image that are overexposed and lack detail didn’t have any detail to add to the story of the image anyway. I enjoy this type of high key image at events. Some other people may not. Remember, if this is your style (or whatever your preferred style is), show it off in your portfolio so when your clients hire you for these events, they know what to expect. That sounds like a *duh* statement but, ya never know?!
