Aaron Brazell, of Technosailor.com, organized and orchestrated the WordCamp MidAtlantic event held on May 16, 2009 in Baltimore, MD. I was tagged as the “official photographer” of the event, and therefore was tromping around the conference rooms of the University of Baltimore's School of Business for about eight hours. Right before lunch, I managed to catch Aaron as he ran around, and made him sit down on the stairs for his official photo. I took six of them, trying to get the one with his best smile. It was helpful that about six people were standing behind me, calling him a goober and all sorts of things- it was making him laugh.

Events are extraordinarily difficult to photograph. For hours, people are (a) sitting and staring at a speaker (b) talking to each other (c) poking their computers and (d) looking really, really boring. It is the challenge of the photographer at this point to take hundreds of photos... and not put everyone to sleep when they’re reviewed later!

The first keynote speaker at WordCampMidAtl was Anil Dash. Anil is the VP of Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox.

Of course, the entire room was crammed full of the 170+ attendees. As for me, I’m fortunately never star struck, and I walked right up to Anil and told him that as the official photographer, I got to make sure I got a great photo of him... and that would definitely, most positively, include holding my TravelMonkey Jacques. Anil cracked up, held the monkey, and beamed at me. Voila! Personality overload.

A major, massive challenge are two things: the lighting is sure to be terrible, and, photographing a room THIS BIG is sure to create all sorts of eyeball aches (look at all those laptops!):

So, what to do? Well, looking at massive crowd shots is not exciting. Oh certainly, I took quite a few of those. But I went roving throughout that huge room in every session, hunting for people’s personalities, ready in a split second with my camera to catch people acting interesting.

Essentially, I never sat down all day. I think I probably did sit down, but my eyes were scanning the crowd, watching for the moment when I could snatch a moment of people-being-people.

That really large conference room, by the way, did indeed cause light problems. Some evil designer of the building decided that the recessed lighting would be *awesome* if it had neat-o lampie things- that were orange. As in, I had to compensate for everyone having a really nice looking tan later. Everything was seriously the wrong shade! When you are actually standing in the room, your brain will adjust and you won’t really notice the color. But the camera doesn’t lie to you: the speakers were blue (from the white screen behind them), the audience was orange, and the photographer was muttering the entire time (as I constantly adjusted for the wrong color). Oh! And flash? Oh, no no no. (I've actually been called a "flash nazi!" to my face, LOL) I did whip it out occasionally, but that was for the initial shot of the speaker showing up. During the sessions, I decided that a constant flashbulb would be extremely distracting, and therefore I didn’t use it.

In the smaller room, there was a whole lot less light. The lights were OFF, actually, because you were supposed to be looking at the speaker and their slides. Er- that’s great for THEM, but for me?! Well. I adjusted for exposure, and overexposed the entire room. Problem solved. All but for the “boring room full of people” part:

What are you supposed to do with THAT?! Ah, the dilemma. Actually, that’s the usual dilemma, as I pointed out. After a couple hours (and six more to go!) you could start wondering what to do with yourself.

My solution, of course, is to start doing people studies. I sat in the room for (obviously) hours, watching people. I do that anyway-I’m a natural people watcher-and so I wait until I see the person looking especially portrait style delicious, and then I snap away.

At the end of the day, the hope is that the flavor of the place was caught. In this case, it was crammed full of people and their laptops, so I definitely went for the shots that reflected that. For the laptops-on-table shot, I politely walked up to the table, stood on a chair, and took the picture. The people at the table found this entertaining, for sure.

Quite a few times I was asked “what I normally photograph.” Well, I normally photograph events, actually, just like this one. A wedding is an event. A tech conference is an event. A party is an event. A congressional hearing is an event. Anything where you’re trying to show the star AND the attendees in the photographs and get the overall ambience = event. (Portraiture is definitely very, very different!)

To see all the photos of the event, visit the set on Flickr!

Anyone who was tired afterward, raise your hand!

The first time I saw Emily I thought she might sprout translucent wings and flit off into the sunlight, sparkling like some sort of magic butterfly. Very pixielike, I thought, and was absolutely thrilled to be photographing such a beautiful, photogenic woman.

It was so easy to take good photos of her, I barely had to try.

There are three major challenges to shooting portraiture in someone's house:

Lighting...
Props...
Backgrounds...

...and of course, a nervous model. Emily said she has never professionally modeled before, but she should. I barely retouched any of these photos- I cropped a couple of them, and removed an outlet off of the wall behind her. But basically, they are just as you see them- light, shadows, laughing, and all.

For lighting I positioned her fluffy chair across from a window. Fortunately, the day was overcast and so there wasn't a danger of crazy overblown sunlight bleaching poor Emily into a white blob. I shoved all her furniture over to the other side of the room, and pointed a small bowl light at her. With a bounce flash pointed up at the ceiling, I snapped away.

During the one hour shoot, she changed her clothes four times, if you count her putting on a jacket at the end. During the setup for the "looking up at Dawn" shot, I stood on a kitchen chair as she positioned herself in the seat, and I'm going to say that it's probably one of my more favorite shots, even though I hadn't yet moved the table out of the way, and she's moving.

Props, of course, are a problem. By props I mean furniture or things that are going to end up showing, like other furniture, plants, or the family cat.

This photo, with her looking backwards at me, has her bookshelf and footrest showing, but I don't find them distracting. I think it looks like she's about to tell you all about her favorite recipe in a magazine!

It's probably one of the best ones in the group, because you can clearly see the line of her chin, the graceful curve of her arm, and she was laughing at me so her smile is completely natural and her eyes are absolutely twinkling with merriment. Either I'm extremely witty, or, Emily is just a really happy person. I was just thrilled with how easy it was to talk with her and get her to laugh.

The last issue, backgrounds, can be absolute murder. One particular shot, with Emily draped across the chair, required me to move everything in the house practically into the other room. A bit of cropping, a bunch of "I really don't want an radiator in this shot" gimping, and voila- ready for a night on the town!

I wasn't actually certain on how this photo was going to look, because putting someone's entire body into a photo can be a challenge. You've got to be sure they're comfortable with where they have their hands placed, how their legs look, and that they're actually having as much fun as you are... otherwise, there is no photo magic!

Many people are very uncertain of how they really look in front of a camera, and it's an understandable issue. But with Emily, I think she did fantastically well, and I'm extremely pleased with my finished shots!

When the cherry trees bloom in Washington DC, everyone and their momma runs out and takes pictures of them.

Well, mostly.

Some of us are crazy, serious photographers (professional and amateurs) and we'll get up at four in the morning to watch the sunrise, or we'll stand in 7* weather to get that clear shot of the... whatever... and we'll stand in the rain taking 500 pictures, just to get one like this:

That's the Jefferson Memorial, viewed from across the Tidal Basin. I didn't manipulate this photo in anyway- no sky blueing, fake cloud inserting, sunlight adding or anything of the sort.

Can't help it. I'm a total purist. If I can't take a good picture of it, I'm not going to "fix it in post." I'll try again :)

The purpose of the shoot was to take pictures of the sunrise, and then the resulting day (this photo was taken at about two in the afternoon) to be used as potential postcards or "this is the lovely Washington DC!" prints. This was my favorite, and will indeed be made into prints, matted, and sold off to the (hopefully adoring) public!

The Smithsonian Institute has odd requests sometimes. At the moment, they are requesting submissions of bug closeups... um... I don't have any bug closeups.

I went to the Botanic Garden hoping to spot a spider, or a big fly, or, well, even an aphid- but alas, there aren't any bugs zooming around in the Botanic Garden! How weird is that?

Well, I did get some pretty awesome photos of flowers, as you can see. This particular pretty one is a lily. There was an entire room of orchids as well, and it was really, really dark in there. I didn't have a diffuser on my fill flash at the moment, so, the ones I took of the orchids didn't come out to my liking.

Outside the Botanic Garden was this massive field of tulips! Ah, I love April and May. There were all sorts of them, spread out like little tufts of spun sugar everywhere- orange, pink, yellow- and those thick green leaves are great contrast!

I've got an affinity for flowers, it's true. I absolutely love flowers, and at every wedding, event dinner, or hotel I'm sitting in is likely to have at least four or five shots of something-growing-in-a-pot.

Can't help it! Nature is gorgeous!

I also tend to never manipulate these photos. WIth most photos, I tend to crop things, or perhaps change the exposure to make things more visible, but I'm not one of those people that is a PhotoShop junkie that mangles everything in sight. A couple friends of mine are trying to convince me to "shoot in the RAW" (an unprocessed photo) so that I can open it up and adjust things (make an overcast sky blue? Make a black and white photo with someone's eyes in color?) but I'm one of those old timey types that just can't wrap my brain around messing with nature.

I mean, the two photos in this post have absolutely no adjusting at all, and I'm inclined to say that Nature is pretty all by itself! :)