The Leaving Do

A colleague asked me to attend a works 'leaving do' recently, and to take the role of 'official' photographer. It was an informal situation, although in a nice hotel garden. I had to be prepared for outdoor shots, but in the end with some rain around they all opted to stay under a white canopy. This was a bit difficult as there was limited room to move around, but the white material was a good surface for bounced flash with no colour issues to worry about. It was an uneven shape however, meaning I had to specifically adjust the 'aim' of the flash for each shot in order to get a good coverage and the right direction for the light to hit the subjects at decent angles ....

All with the K7, D FA28-105mm, Pentax AF-540FGZII (On-Camera P-TTL), mostly shot with ISO400, F5.6 - F8, 1/90th - 180th sec ......













































Thanks for your views, and any discussions on event photography! (questions often seem to come up about this situation)

Some lovely expressions captured there Nigel

A few things I noticed: the opening image I would crop the bottom where the glasses are. A few I think look a little flat and in need of contrast. The third from bottom image I think the shadows have been recovered too far under the brim of the gentleman's hat.

I like the facial expressions as well. As Gareth, one or two are a bit flat; no 2 and no 6 could do with a bit of 'punch' added IMO. Composition is great!

Agree with Gareth here , the first image is godd but a crop would improve it.

The 4th really captures the character well.

well knowing our retiring man there I think he would prefer his beers left in!. But I'll certainly do a cropped version too, thanks for the tip, it will bring the focus in to the character more.

Thanks for the points about the contrast ...I can try some more pop with the processing. These were actually from camera JPEGs, with the Portrait pre-set and default contrast, and so they did not go through the Sagelight RAW software, which usually does it's stuff to my DNGs automatically, and certainly adds punch, so I can boost things in PhotoShop more with these.

The challenge here was the lighting, with absolutely nothing inside the canopy, just awful deep shadow and the glaring brightness outside, so I've tried to limit contrast and I pitched the flash exposures low, both for contrast reasons as well as the black skin tones. I don't think my AF-549FGZII has ever experienced such a lot of twisting and spinning of the head constantly in such a short period before!

On the whole I like the images. .. As a K7 owner myself I like to see the results other owners produce. Personally I would like to have seen you use a faster lens to seperate the subject a bit more.. and lower the saturation a touch.. But on the whole I dont think your collegue will complain too much...

Yes, I would like to have a wide aperture autofocus lens, ideally a zoom, for this sort of thing, it would help you're right Stub.