How to photograph an event | Event Photographer Orange County

When learning how to photograph an event, or how to do event photography here’s a few tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years.

When I’m photographing events I often get the,

“Wow, you have a nice camera. All you have to do is click a button and you’ll get a great photo.”

But, I’m hear to tell you.. that’s not all I do. It’s quite a bit more than clicking a button.

For me, documenting and photographing an event is a whole experience. It’s using the knowledge from workshops I’ve attended to know the settings of my camera. Since I shoot in manual, it’s crucial to know which setting my ISO, Aperture, and Shutter should be set at. It’s also crucial to know when I have to manipulate those settings to produce the perfect picture in an dim lit room.

When photographing events, here are 5 things to keep in mind when learning How to Photograph an Event:

1. Look for good lighting in the room

Typical rooms that events are held in, have poor lighting and are dimmer in some areas of the room than others. The lighting is typically scattered and is either, too harsh, too dark, or just right. It’s so important to find the good key spots to shoot in.

2. Seek out where the speaker speaks, before they begin speaking or where in the room majority of the event will take place

I want to make sure that wherever the speaker is, there’s not a harsh light right behind him, or right above him. If there’s harsh light above him it can cause dark shadows under his eyes and make him look not-too-flattering. On the contrary, if there’s a bright light behind him, it can leave the image looking too distracting.

3. Analyze the people

Using my degree in Social Behavior helps me to quickly analyze the room, and the people in it. It’s so vital to know when a person is about to smile, laugh, or cry… knowing their personalities and seeing them interact helps me to be able to watch for those oh so small cues, and document the moment right as it’s about to happen.

4. How to be Discrete

I love being able to find spots in the room that are far enough away. This allows me to choose my lenses wisely and capture a close shot, from a far distance. When I’m out of sight it allows me to get more genuine and candid emotions during the events.

5. Know the ins and outs of your lenses and all the equipment in your bag

Knowing your lenses is also crucial. Especially if you’re using prime lenses. These mean.. the lenses don’t zoom. I prefer prime lenses verse the zoom lenses every day. (I’ll be sure to blog my prime versus zoom in a later post.) Knowing your prime lenses is crucial because you don’t want to keep switching lenses to see what is best, you want to be able to know that when you step into a room, you’ll know what lens will work best for that room. There’s so much practice and a tad of research that goes into knowing and feeling confident with your lenses. Most of my events I shoot with a 50mm and an 85mm and my d810e. I love the 810e because of the quality of image it offers in a low light situation, and the 50mm allows me to capture more of the room at a closer distance, while the 85mm allows me to document up-close images while being further away. While knowing that aspect of your lens is important, it’s also important to know how open the aperture can be. For example you don’t want to be using a lens that only goes to a 3.5, but rather a 1.2-1.8g.

Those are just the top 5 things I look for when photographing an event. I hope this How to Photograph an Event blog has helped you! As you can see, it’s definitely more than just, “clicking a button” . :)

Orange County Family Photographer, Kincannon Photography is a professional photographer in Orange County, California capturing newborn, seniors, dog, children and family portraits.

Kincannon Photography is based in Yorba Linda, and serves all surrounding areas including Newport Beach, Irvine, Corona Del Mar, Brea, San Juan Capistrano, Aliso Viejo, Mission Viejo, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Villa Park, Laguna Beach, Newport Coast, and other surrounding Orange County metro areas.

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