A new customer has came up on my radar. On 27/05 I had a 40th birthday party to go as a guest and the last minute the birthday “boy” (well, a man on his 40th) asked to hire me to take the photos of his party for a reasonable price. As he is a good friend, I instead offered it as his birthday present. He felt bad about not paying me for the work when I should be enjoying the party, but he also loved the opportunity.

I did a bit of juggling in mingling and taking photos of the guests interactions. I insisted that I be called for specific photos he wanted and at the beginning he was hesitant as he wanted me to have fun as well, but as the night progressed, he started asking for the photos. I was able to get between 60 and 70 usable photos throughout the night and am progressively editing them.

It is quite challenging taking photos of evening events like that. With the low light available in the event makes focusing difficult. The camera often struggles to find the edges to correct the focus and manual focus (which I sometimes do) is difficult for the same reason, as well as because you need to be quick in these photos as not to lose the flow of the evening.

Editing the photos also requires a lot of thought. I always try to make sure that the subjects of the photos are what stands out of the photo. At the same time, I need to make sure that not too much noise and color distortion is added into the photo due to digitally increasing the exposure, shadows and blacks. The photos may need to go through de-noising processes, which ultimately reduces the details in the photos. I also need to adjust the warmth of the photos, as low light can give everything a generous touch of yellow making skin color look jaundiced.

My brightest lens is my 20mm from Sigma (f/1.4) which is a wide angle/fisheye. It introduces a lot of distortion, especially on the edges of the photos. When that happens, I needed to try to minimize the distortions to make people seem proportional, which isn’t always possible. Bottom line is I need a brighter 50mm (or even 35mm) lens to help me in such situations as indoor evening events.

I leave here a few of the photos I have edited so far.