On December 12, 2009, volunteer photographers and other volunteers got together to donate time and materials to create family portraits for people that otherwise wouldn't be able to have them. I wrote it up here.

Although I cannot post pictures of the actual participants, I can post photos of the other photographers and assistants as I describe the event.

I arrived (second... not first, like usual) and helped another photographer set up this large gray sweep. A "sweep" is a huge (usually cloth) background that goes from ceiling to floor. It has plenty of material on the floor in order to create the "seamless" look, and this particular one was probably about 12 feet wide. The junior photographer I brought with me, Jenny, obligingly stood on the newly erected gray sweep and patiently waited while we pointed various lights at her in order to dispel as many shadows as possible.

This background is actually so large that in the end, we took our group shot in front of it, and it was posted by another photographer here. All thirteen of us-including the really helpful kid!-managed to cram ourselves into the shot.

We had three backgrounds erected. There was the gray sweep, the black sweep, and a really nifty foldy gray-splatty pop up. It ended up being an odd team effort, with three photographers at each station. Two of us would switch back and forth between shooting the families, and the third photographer would peer over our shoulders and help us decide if the shots looked good or not.

I was at the black sweep with Jack (pictured here) and Bill. This shot here is of Jack letting me test the flash power on his head. We were using a speedlight and it had this really cool remote firing device on it. Of course, the first shot I took of Jack made him look like he'd been nuked... this is after I set my aperture to 6.7.

The black sweep was interesting in that we didn't put chairs in front. The gray sweep had a couch (it's in the group shot) and the gray-splatty background had a rocking chair. That meant that people in wheelchairs were led over to our spot.

I discovered instantly that if one person is in a wheelchair, the other people in the photo should NOT be standing if it can be helped. The difference in heights would be extremely obvious, and, it creates a big gap between the person standing behind or near the wheelchair.

I also was using a regular portrait lens (my 28-70mm f2.8L) and while that's great for one person, it doesn't work well for more than two. Mostly, though, I was shooting two people close together and so it worked great. The couple of times I shot a group of four I had to back up so far I nearly fell over the people behind me.

I also was the lucky person who got to shoot Leroy.

Leroy was the cat.

Leroy did not want to be in the pictures.

The gentleman that had Leroy in his pictures loved the "your cat is being strangled" photos anyway. He had his best friend in the pictures with him, and they were both trying to get Leroy to look at the camera.

As you can see, Leroy was not cooperating. :) The picture I eventually chose to print was the shot with the cat being kissed on the head. It was the cutest.

Each person got about three or four photos taken of them (with the exception of The Leroy Incident, and I took nine). Then, we took our memory cards out, walked over to the (totally amazingly cool) Selphy photo printers, and instantly printed out 4x6 prints!

As you might wonder... no... we could NOT edit the photos at that point. The Selphy photo printers would print out the file exactly as it was. Occasionally we'd have to go to the computer and crop a picture because an edge was showing, but mostly it was Shoot it RIGHT because that's what you're PRINTING!!

I did go home and have a good look at the photos I took, and here is one of me.. well, looking. The photo is of an adorable older lady that was wearing bobble-reindeer antlers on her head. She was posing with one of the staffers at the retirement home. Because of confidentiality I can't directly post the photos here. I've been debating whether the photo I'm looking at here or the "strangle-the-cat" photo is my favorite of the day.

(all photos can be viewed full size by right-clicking on them.)

**Update: There has been an official press release about the event HERE**

CodeWorks 2009 was a series of two-day conferences for PHP developers and IT managers organized and run by the publishers of php|architect Magazine. It was held in seven cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Washington DC, and New York over the course of September 22 to October 5th. At the DC stop, I arrived to take pictures on both Friday and Saturday.

The event was held inside the amazing Embassy Suites in Old Town Alexandria, VA. I say it was amazing because it had an incredible indoor atrium over eight floors high.

This particular picture was taken from the eighth floor. I'm not particularly fond of heights, and it made me nervous to be up there, but I leaned over the railing (eek!) and took a picture of the attendees while the ate lunch on Friday.

I took this shot from multiple vantage points, and the trees were a challenge because they obscured the view.

Also a challenge was attempting to pull my camera all the way back to 28... every time I leaned over the railing... THUNK. It took a few times of tipping my camera to the point right before the lens would shift (thank you, gravity!) and I got to take this really cool photo.

The rooms for the conference were on the ground floor, but there was an interesting issue: the air conditioning!

Since the "rooms" were actually a "mega-room", it was freezing in the room to the left, perfect in the middle room, and a complete sauna to the right.

More so, the lighting was awful. Each room had a staggered, uneven lighting scheme, with the lights turned a bit low so the attendees would be able to see the screens better.

What that creates, of course, is orange and blue light!

It didn't help much that the walls were off white, either, because it reflected the weird haze off the chandeliers. This is a common problem at any event.

The solution is to change the color temperature of the photo. It's best to do this while you're actually taking the picture, for example, to put your camera at 2600K or so.

Another option is to fix it later in your photo editing program. I use Aperture 2 myself. Fortunately, all the tables in the room had white table cloths, and all the attendees were wearing white nametags. Problem solved :)

One of the most insanely difficult parts of shooting an event is THE SPEAKERS.

There are a few reasons for this. One, they are near the projector, so, in addition to being in an orange room, the white light of the projector is making them blue!

They also MOVE. This is the hardest part, because when I'm shooting during a presentation I Do Not Use Flash. It would be incredibly annoying to everyone attending to have the flash going off repeatedly, so, I have to up my ISO and open my camera all the way up in order to stop motion as much as possible.

Of course, they're also talking. It is hard to take a picture of someone talking because most of the time, you'll get a shot right when they've got their mouth at some crazy shape, and that makes them look weird.

So, I take about twenty shots at a time of them speaking, purely with the intent of "getting the mouth open but not in a bizarro sort of way." It needs to be apparently they are giving a speech, but not in such a way the person wants to strangle you later.

Each speaker also has their own style. I watch each person for a while to see if they are hand wavers, podium balancers, or walkers.

Some of them, of course, sit on the table and drink tea while their PowerPoint is on AutoPlay. If that's who they are, that's what I try to catch!

I also try to catch the event's flavor, and by that I mean I try to show what the people themselves were like. Of course, there is the part where everyone is sitting around eating lunch. But there is also the part where people are really enjoying themselves and they're going to goof off for the camera.

Near the end of the two days, there is always the time where I've sifted through all my photos and decided, nope, I really don't like any of the shots I've taken of someone.

In the case of speakers, I will always ask them if I can take a portrait instead.

Most speakers are quite happy to pose, and I've frequently had the new photo I've taken of someone become a new profile shot. I take that as a compliment!

I tend to not take a million and one photos while I am shooting an event. I do not come back to my computer with a memory card loaded with nine hundred photos I have to sift through. For this event, I came back with maybe four hundred, and I chose 178 to put up online.

I think that every shot I take should be exactly what I was attempting to do, every time. I've found that shooting that way has enabled me to get that shot where I'm only able to take one photo, and it actually comes out right. This last photo, for instance, I saw the speaker for all of two minutes and was able to take one picture of him... but I think it came out rather well. It looks a bit like he's sitting in a forest (he was in front of a planter).

It's also a lot easier to not  be excessive shooter when I start sifting through all those photos- I've got mostly exactly what I want, and I'm not wasting my time sorting! That enabled me to upload photos within two hours of finishing: upload, sort, adjust, export, voila! I love Aperture 2 :) I recommend it.

Shooting the DC stop of the tour made me want to follow them to New York (the last stop). I like shooting events, and most of the time I get at least one person who wanders up to me and starts talking about my camera. I almost always shoot events with my 28-70mm 2.8L lens, because it gives me enough freedom to get awesome bokeh (like in the "he's in a forest?" shot) and yet enough pull back I can shoot an entire room and get the whole thing in.

All the shots from this event are in my Code Works 2009 set on Flickr, or you can browse them in the player below.