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Photographing Events at Barclays

Throughout my time as an Application Developer at Barclays Bank in Wilmington, I was fortunate enough to be asked to photograph various company events. The annual Diwali celebration, the Toastmasters functions, the Asian Professional forum, and the Holi celebration, charity Cricket matches. Without question in doing these events I was able to become a better photographer. The ambient lighting changes and the scene situations called for quick decisions in regard to lighting and positioning. Each situation called for different approaches to the subject matter. Dancing, portrait booths, individual head shots, timed group shots were all part of the various scenarios I was asked to photograph. Choice of lenses, metering, battery supply are all issues I've had to deal with.

Toastmasters

The Toastmasters was a semi annual event. In this event there were numerous speakers giving lectures, and short talks on their particular topics, as well as awards. Here I generally would not use the flash as it would be too distracting to the speakers and the audience. My thought would be to capture the speaker framed either left or right with the presentation slides showing in the background on the big screen. Timing also, the intensity of the presenter, capturing the high points of the speech.

Diwalli

Dawalli was hands down my favorite event to photograph. I wanted to capture all the color and dancing of this awesome Indian holiday celebration. Extensive use of the wide angle 17 to 40 shooting bottom up was my signature approach.

I would time my shutter release to coincide with the music. Every measure of 4 beats would reveal a new dance move or position. I particularly wanted to capture the swirling colorful dresses of the dancers. I learned how to frame properly doing this. Over the years I also began experimenting with tilting the camera to capture a different movement and look.

 

I generally would position myself at the front of the staging area where I can use my ultra wide to its fullest advantage.

 What I came to realize that in order to freeze capture the movement I had to utilize the fastest memory cards out there, those more suited for film. I generally used my speed-light reflected off the ceiling. For the group and portrait I used the MagMod MagBounce, a gorgeous bounce modifier. I sometimes played around with a Hoya red intensifier to push the red colors a bit, I really liked it but it tended to cut down on the clarity of the movement. As always, AI Servo was the shot mode for the dance numbers.

Holi 

Holi celebration was an outdoor event. Lots of color and motion and powder flying every which way. Mode was AIServo, and for this I used my Canon 70 - 200 with no filters or flash. My goal was to capture the action as everyone would throw colored power on each other. Keeping my distance as I did NOT want to get any of that in the camera. The biggest challenge was keeping the colored power away from my camera! 

APF

The Asian Professional forum was a challenge. I tried to capture the mood of the event which tended to be dark and with striking colors. Individuals were stationed throughout the floor working on crafts and origami.