Corporate Events
most of the Corporate Events’ content has been intentionally blurred (facial features) upon client request, to respect their employees’ identity and privacy
A corporate event represents a highlight moment of a company’s business cycle. As a form of social and corporate recognition, such events also cater to reinforcing a company’s employee engagement culture.
In additional to the takeaway message(s) that corporate leaders wish their employees to retain from such events, visual imagery of an event is a powerful cognitive and engagement tool to further ground the event experience and create a ‘post-event ripple’ effect - especially in today’s social media sharing environment - with all players involved.
capturing emotion & energy
However, for that to happen, the event photography needs to be of a higher caliber to become more than just a standard visual record of the experience: The photography has to be appealing, genuine, show & communicate feeling, and in essence be ‘real’.
Too often, the importance and potential of event photography is overlooked, merely viewed as just another one of many necessary line items of the event organisation's components.
natural moments between people
tlbphotography takes a different approach to go beyond generic event photography. Starting ‘on the floor’ at production level, tlbphotography captures an event without using on-camera flash; only the natural & artificial lighting of the event itself. This is done for several reasons, and leads to a number of major differences in capture and visual style.
see below for a detailed comparison of how Ambient Light rather than Flash is overall better for any type of event photography
Most event photographers are uncomfortable not using an on-camera flash, as it requires experience and continual in-camera adjustments ‘on the go’ in order to fine-tune the capture for constantly evolving lighting situations and subject movement.
Flash vs Ambient Light Photography
Flash photography creates a very specific (and limited) type of lighting, and certainly not the type of lighting that has been professionally crafted for the event. In addition, an on-camera flash’s cone-of-light is spacially limited, meaning that most flash photography of this nature is only meant to capture (small groups of) people while blacking-out the event’s environment & experience.
Ambient light photography uses all available light, and as such highlights the event’s crafted light scheme. There is no cone-of-light limitation, therefore the imagery captured is as intended for the eye to see.
The flash’s limited cone-of-light also means that photography can only be captured at a set maximum distance (otherwise there’s simply not enough flash power to light the scene), which further limits the angles and opportunities to capture a unique scene unfolding at more-than-maximum distance. This is especially important as in event photography, there’s usually only one opportunity for capture before the scene evolves.
There is no distance limitation with ambient light photography; the lens can be pointed & zoomed to any area of interest and capture the scene.
Flash photography is both intrusive & disruptive. Subjects are very aware of the camera flash, and as such either shy away from it or un-naturally pose for it. In either case, it distrupts the subjects’ flow, making the photography ‘staged’ and ‘un-real’, and making it virtually impossible to capture people ‘in the moment’.
Ambient light photography is neither intrusive nor disruptive. Most times, subjects are not aware they are being photographed (unless intended) and are therefor captured in the moment; Reality with all its natural emotion.
A typical on-camera flash has an average recycling time of 1 second, meaning that only 1 image can be captured per second. In an event environment where action and interactions are fast-paced, the flash photographer relies on a good deal of sheer luck to capture that winning shot - and assuming the people being photographed do not shy away or pose for the shot once the pre-focus flash blinks.
The rate of capture is only limited by the camera’s performance, on average around 6 frames per second. This means that ambient light photography allows for the capture of 6 times more images, which in turn means there are 6 times more opportunities to capture that perfect shot.