Nightlife Event Photography Tips – Zombie Apocalypse
May 25th, 2009
A horde of pole-dancing, hula-hooping, record spinning zombies descended on Basecamp in Salt Lake City, Utah Saturday evening. Very few Basecamp patrons survived the ensuing carnage to see the sun rise in the morning.
Here are some techniques that came in handy for this event:
Use loooong shutter speeds – Try 1/2 – 1/25th of a second. In dark rooms, light is hard to come by. Keep the shutter open to let ambient light saturate the frame. When using flash as the key-light, the quick-firing flash strobe will freeze the action for you, so don’t worry too much about motion blur.
Use LOW ISO – I know it seems logical that you’d want to bump the ISO up in low-light, but doing so will introduce ugly digital noise – and when you’re in a dark environment that requires a flash key-light anyway, high ISO settings serve no purpose whatsoever. After all, you’re creating the main light source. You can set the ISO as low as it goes.
Get the flash off the camera – I know it’s more convenient to pop your flash in your hot-shoe when you’re running and gunning at an event, but trust me – pulling the flash off the camera gives you more creative opportunities for controlling the angle of the light. You can achieve many unique looks, rather than the same flat look you see all the time from less adventurous nightlife photographers.
For larger groups, get the flash farther back – The farther back the light is, the more evenly it will be distributed.
Use a zoom lens – In tight quarters (such as a packed crowd), you’re going to have to get in close, and that means using a wide angle lens – but sometimes you’ll want to zoom in for close-ups of the action.
Find an interesting event to photograph – What’s better than sexy zombies? You tell me! Whatever it is, go find it.