Corinne Dany explains some basic tips for photographing social gatherings and special events involving family and friends.
Covering social events for your family and friends will stretch your photographic skills to their limit and present you with many situations in which you’ll be able to practice almost every genre of photography. You’ll cover portraiture, sill life, macro, landscape and journalistic-style shots.
As well as the main events and social interaction of the guests, you’ll search out images such as individual and group portraits, pictures of cakes, flowers, details of a christening gown, and even the surrounding beautiful scenery.
There are some key points to keep in mind to capture any event successfully; two of the most useful being timing and preparation. It’s very important to get to an event early. There are always last-minute, unexpected things which happen and if you’ve arrived well before an official start you won’t get frazzled because you’ll have plenty of time to deal with it calmly. If there happens to be no problems then you can use your free time to capture decorations, cakes or flowers, while they’re fresh and uneaten… or rather, still standing! I was covering a family function one summer and I was very happy to have made sure I’d photographed the cake before everyone arrived, because when the time came to cut the cake it was melting into a horrible mess!
It can be very useful to find out a basic itinerary before a special event, so you can make sure you’re available at key times of the day…
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Tips on using natural light in your landscape photography * Useful tips for macro photography * Locations – Yarram, Vic * Olympus E5 DSLR