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Working as a Boca Raton Photographer definitely allows me to meet special high achieving people. At a recent event photography assignment I had the unique honor to meet and photograph astronaut Scott Kelly.
I was hired to photograph a multi-day group event for a plastic container manufacturing organization with was held at The Boca Raton Hotel here in South Florida. When I was hired, I was told that there would be Break out sessions and workshops as well as some team building events. In addition I was hired to photograph headshots of every attendee.
Creating headshots at a South Florida Corporate event is very common and we certainly shoot a ton of them. More on this later.
So you may be wondering, Why would a Plastic organization have an astronaut as a key note speaker? Well as it turns out Plastic Flexible containers is one of the most important aspects of life on the International Space Station. Plastic containers are flexible and they take up less room because they can be shaped into the tight storage areas. They can be used to keep food fresh. According to Astronaut Scott Kelly all the food was eaten from plastic containers.
Scott Kelly gave s fantastic presentation filled with lots and lots of images from his career. As the hired event photographer, I wanted to photograph both the keynote speaker and his presentation images in the background. This was a challenge because Mr Kelly as quite a distance from his images that were being presented on the video screens in the background.
Because I'm a Boca Raton photographer I get to cover many special events. Each event presents some unique challenges, I realized that I had several photographic challenges to face during this segment of the assignment. First, I had to use some flash, The lighting on the video slide show screen was completely different than the lighting on Astronaut Scott Kelly's face. I knew that I would have to match both perfectly. Also, since Astronaut Kelly was so far away from the screen I had to deal with the issue of focus fall off, this meant that I had to use a small F-Stop in order to keep both Astronaut Kelly and the background in focus.
In addition, I didn't want to annoy Astronaut Kelly by using too much flash. As you can see from the photos I was able to get pictures of the famous keynote speaker and still keep the images clear in the background.
One of my favorite things about being a Boca Raton Photographer is the wide range of assignments I'm given. Over the years I have photographed a huge number of Corporate Events, Team Building Events, Lectures, Golf Events, fundraising galas, awards dinners, Book Signings, The list of different types of corporate events goes on and on.
In addition I travel all over South Florida, I can be found photographing special or corporate events in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties. Normally I'm photographing corporate events in hotels such as, The Breakers, The Ritz Carlton, Fort Lauderdale, The Harbor Beach Marriott, The Lowes South Beach, the Opal Grand, and the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. Since most of the entire USA is freezing cold in the winter months, South Florida is a haven for Corporate Events. Attendees get to attend the conference and still find time to enjoy the beautiful South Florida weather.
Earlier, I mentioned Headshots. Almost every corporate event asks me to shoot some headshots. Even at events where I have not been asked to shoot headshots by the client I still have a number of people come up to me ask for a quick headshot.
If you are having a headshot taken here are some tips that will help you get the best results. To learn more about my headshot photography click over to this post I wrote on headshots.
It's not a good idea to wear any graphic logo shirts or shirts that contain logos. If you need to show a company logo in your headshot, then bring a plain shirt and take 2 sets. Often if the company logo is placed too log on your shirt it will be 1/2 cut off. Having shot hundreds of headshots I know to shoot the logo and then re-place it in a better location using photoshop.
Don't wear shirts with patterns or thin stripes on your shirt. These just don’t work well. There is a term called the moire effect which happens of many computer screens. The moire effect can make images on a computer screen look awful.
If you wear glasses and you know you are having a headshot taken then do you best to see that your glasses have an anti-refective coating on the lenses. I have also seen people arrive with 2 different eye glasses, One with no lenses so that there is no glare on the lens.
As a special event photographer I have photographed many people who wear glasses. By changing the placement of the headshot lighting I can usually hide most signs of glare. I can also remove the rest using photoshop. However, if you are really serious about having the perfect headshot, use the anti-reflective coating on you lenses. It really works like a charm. I recently wrote an entire article on corporate, business and headshots for dating website. That's right, dating websites. I actually shot headshots for my pool guy and he using them online and met his wife. I would like to think I had played a role in his getting married. Oh, by the way, I shot the wedding also.
Sorry about the little headshot tangent. However, I'm asked to do headshots more than anything at South Florida Corporate events. This event with Astronaut Scott Kelly had close to 700 attendees. That's a lot of headshots. Doing this many headshots meant they have to be done quickly and efficiently. In the end every attendee got a beautiful corporate headshot e-mailed to them after the event.