nikonosguy
Well-known
ok, just trying to clear my head a bit -- have a new partner in my studio - i've been kind of a lone wolf... she has us pimped out for an event next week - - am going to rely on the xpro 1 and have the xe1 in my bag for emergencies... am just trying to run this over in my head...
1) we are offering 4x6 prints at the event - I have a very capable hp photo printer, lots of paper, and extra ink... there's no way to do watermarks on the fly, there's no way to wifi print -- so, it will be a bit labor intensive... her son will be available to be my printer if need be -- don't know if i'm going to have a steady stream of one or two people or if it's going to be a line ten deep -- open to ideas of streamlining this
2) will probably use the 60mm for 99% of things, am using my novatron strobes for lighting --- have an outlet,5 batteries, extra sd card, power strip card table, white card, backdrop,stands - am i forgetting anything?
3) it's a vintage / retro fashion thing -- i'm not going to have the luxury of post process i don't think - shooting high jpg -- any thoughts on film simulation or just go for my usual bright, saturated colors
4) wish me luck - don't usually work with others, but we do think we can work well together
1) we are offering 4x6 prints at the event - I have a very capable hp photo printer, lots of paper, and extra ink... there's no way to do watermarks on the fly, there's no way to wifi print -- so, it will be a bit labor intensive... her son will be available to be my printer if need be -- don't know if i'm going to have a steady stream of one or two people or if it's going to be a line ten deep -- open to ideas of streamlining this
2) will probably use the 60mm for 99% of things, am using my novatron strobes for lighting --- have an outlet,5 batteries, extra sd card, power strip card table, white card, backdrop,stands - am i forgetting anything?
3) it's a vintage / retro fashion thing -- i'm not going to have the luxury of post process i don't think - shooting high jpg -- any thoughts on film simulation or just go for my usual bright, saturated colors
4) wish me luck - don't usually work with others, but we do think we can work well together
Vince Lupo
Whatever
I have done this many times (first started with peel-apart Polaroids, then moved to digital) -- how long is the event and how long are you there? Are you offering the 4x6's in folders? How many people are going to be at this event? When you mean 'vintage / retro fashion thing', do you mean you're going to have clothing, hats etc available for people to wear for these photos?
One thing that I found helpful was to have a number of memory cards available (I'm assuming you're plugging the SD card into the printer and hitting 'Print All' on the printer, yes?). If you have 10 people deep (or 20!), you're not going to want to wait for very long before you start the printing process going. Have you figured out how long your HP printer takes to print a single 4x6? If it's 10 seconds, well then multiply that out by how many photos you anticipate doing and you'll know how long it's going to take just to print the photos. So what I did was to shoot, say, 20 shots, then hand off that card to my assistant, then put a new card in my camera. Next 20 shots, another card etc. At least that way I get the ball rolling on printing, and the assistant isn't just standing around doing nothing. Plus I had two printers going (we'd usually do about 350 prints in a 3 hour time slot). People don't want to have to wait forever for their photo. And they may come back again and again for a photo -- 'Let me get a shot with these friends, okay now one by myself, now how about me and these three other people etc etc'. And if there is alcohol at this event, expect people to get more 'daring' as the evening progresses.
You listed equipment, and asked if you were forgetting anything. Sandbags. Sandbag your stands, if you don't already do so. Sandbag your light stands, your background stands. Tape your wires down. You want a safe environment - both for your equipment and for the attendees (I even used orange safety cones and positioned them at the feet of my light stands). You don't want to have someone tripping over a wire and have a strobe on a stand come crashing down. Make sure you have enough table space to spread out the 4x6 prints -- people may wander off and come back later to pick up their print, so you'll want to have a table or a bulletin board etc so that people can pick up their photo easily and not have to sift through a pile of prints. What are you sitting the printer on, BTW? See if the event venue has some of those rectangular banquet tables with table cloths you can borrow.
Personally, if you're only printing 4x6's, I would test out a 'Normal/Medium' JPEG and see how it prints. If it looks okay, I'd go with that. High JPEG might be overkill and take more time for the printer to process and print. Keep the technical aspects of the picture-taking as basic as possible - we're not after high-art here, just well-exposed, sharp photos that look reasonably like your subjects.
How wide is your background? You may need to limit how many people you can shoot at one time -- don't forget, if you do a group shot with six people, that's six prints you'll have to be making (as each person will want a copy), and it's going to take a bit more time to get the folks together etc. Time is really the important thing for assignments like this -- time for the taking of the photos, time for the printing of the photos, time for the presentation and 'delivery' of the photos.
As you can probably detect from reading this, I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of experience shooting exactly what you're going to shoot. I am the kind of person who imagines 'worst case scenarios', so that's why I have provided the suggestions and advice above. Manage your time effectively, and if you have a mass of people waiting to have their photos taken, make sure that HP printer is churning out prints as you're continuing to take photos, not after you're done taking all the photos.
Good luck.
One thing that I found helpful was to have a number of memory cards available (I'm assuming you're plugging the SD card into the printer and hitting 'Print All' on the printer, yes?). If you have 10 people deep (or 20!), you're not going to want to wait for very long before you start the printing process going. Have you figured out how long your HP printer takes to print a single 4x6? If it's 10 seconds, well then multiply that out by how many photos you anticipate doing and you'll know how long it's going to take just to print the photos. So what I did was to shoot, say, 20 shots, then hand off that card to my assistant, then put a new card in my camera. Next 20 shots, another card etc. At least that way I get the ball rolling on printing, and the assistant isn't just standing around doing nothing. Plus I had two printers going (we'd usually do about 350 prints in a 3 hour time slot). People don't want to have to wait forever for their photo. And they may come back again and again for a photo -- 'Let me get a shot with these friends, okay now one by myself, now how about me and these three other people etc etc'. And if there is alcohol at this event, expect people to get more 'daring' as the evening progresses.
You listed equipment, and asked if you were forgetting anything. Sandbags. Sandbag your stands, if you don't already do so. Sandbag your light stands, your background stands. Tape your wires down. You want a safe environment - both for your equipment and for the attendees (I even used orange safety cones and positioned them at the feet of my light stands). You don't want to have someone tripping over a wire and have a strobe on a stand come crashing down. Make sure you have enough table space to spread out the 4x6 prints -- people may wander off and come back later to pick up their print, so you'll want to have a table or a bulletin board etc so that people can pick up their photo easily and not have to sift through a pile of prints. What are you sitting the printer on, BTW? See if the event venue has some of those rectangular banquet tables with table cloths you can borrow.
Personally, if you're only printing 4x6's, I would test out a 'Normal/Medium' JPEG and see how it prints. If it looks okay, I'd go with that. High JPEG might be overkill and take more time for the printer to process and print. Keep the technical aspects of the picture-taking as basic as possible - we're not after high-art here, just well-exposed, sharp photos that look reasonably like your subjects.
How wide is your background? You may need to limit how many people you can shoot at one time -- don't forget, if you do a group shot with six people, that's six prints you'll have to be making (as each person will want a copy), and it's going to take a bit more time to get the folks together etc. Time is really the important thing for assignments like this -- time for the taking of the photos, time for the printing of the photos, time for the presentation and 'delivery' of the photos.
As you can probably detect from reading this, I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of experience shooting exactly what you're going to shoot. I am the kind of person who imagines 'worst case scenarios', so that's why I have provided the suggestions and advice above. Manage your time effectively, and if you have a mass of people waiting to have their photos taken, make sure that HP printer is churning out prints as you're continuing to take photos, not after you're done taking all the photos.
Good luck.
nikonosguy
Well-known
Comments are in red, thanks again
Vince Lupo
Whatever
I can't stress enough the importance of sandbags. At these events that I've done (Holiday parties for companies at a hotel with 450 people in attendance etc), what a lot of people do when it's their turn to get their photos taken is walk right up to the backdrop and stand on it. If it's a group of people getting their picture taken, they want to go and stand right against the back of it (sometimes they would do it before I had a chance to tell them to stand at the taped line on the floor that's 6 feet out from the backdrop). So when they would do this, I could see the top of the backdrop rocking back and forth a bit (I'd use a 9ft wide background, about 9ft high, and it swooped down to the floor a couple of feet.). I double-sandbagged the stands, so thankfully nothing could happen, but if those stands were not sandbagged, there would have been real trouble.
The event you're doing may be completely different from a holiday party with 450 people with access to alcohol (and someone else is paying for the photos), but the presence of light stands without some kind of weight holding them down when there's a bunch of people around is a recipe for potential calamity. At least this has been my personal experience.
The event you're doing may be completely different from a holiday party with 450 people with access to alcohol (and someone else is paying for the photos), but the presence of light stands without some kind of weight holding them down when there's a bunch of people around is a recipe for potential calamity. At least this has been my personal experience.
nikonosguy
Well-known
thanks -- they are on my list --- usually studio stuff stays in the studio
johannielscom
Snorting silver salts
Blake, how about getting some stickers with contact data and sticking those to the back of the photos? Not as good as watermarks but a lot easier to apply and people still get to retrace you afterwards.
nikonosguy
Well-known
stickers are done as of last night
nikonosguy
Well-known
It went well, financially, not so much. I covered printing expenses.
4 or 5 airstream trailers, lots of pretty people, lots of networking, no incidents, good natural light augmented with a single novatron strobe... did networking. Was fun
4 or 5 airstream trailers, lots of pretty people, lots of networking, no incidents, good natural light augmented with a single novatron strobe... did networking. Was fun