Surprises Happen

I was scheduled to work in the kitchen serving food and bussing tables at a surprise birthday party. The party was for a man turning 80, and he had relatives coming all the way from Texas to celebrate with him.

As I was being given instructions for kitchen duty, I overheard one of the party planners talking about a photographer. Due to a miscommunication, this photographer had no camera! I was shocked this could have happened. It’s sort of like a racecar driver showing up for a championship race without a car, or a soldier going off to fight a war without a rifle. (I’d better give my brother Matt credit for that last one.) Without entirely thinking the situation through, I spoke up.

“I have a bunch of photo gear.”

“With you now?”

“I can run home and get it really quick.”

“Do you have a camera?”

(Here I’m thinking, by whose definition of “a bunch of photo gear” does that not include a camera?) “...Yes, I have a camera.”

And so I got the job of photographing this man’s surprise 80th birthday party. I had maybe 20 minutes to plan, most of which was spent driving home and back to get my camera bag. That’s gotta be the smallest amount of time I’ve ever had between being hired and starting to photograph an event! It was cut so close that I got back to the location, put my stuff down, assembled my camera, and was walking out onto the event floor guessing the correct exposure settings while the lights were being turned off because the birthday boy was arriving!

My part in the party ended up working out surprisingly well. There were lots of things to shoot while the party happened. Everybody seemed to really love this man who they were celebrating with.

Partway through the event came the announcement: “The photographer doesn’t know this, but we’re gonna do a group picture now!” After a second of panic, I remembered shooting a similar group photo in this exact same room about a month back... I set my camera up about the same way, save the tripod and wireless shutter remote to get myself in the other photo.

To get everyone in the group well lit, well exposed, and sharp, I bounced my 2 most powerful flashes on full power off the high white ceiling. This made the ceiling act like a giant diffuse light source, making everyone look pretty. With both flashes firing, they gave me enough light that I was able to use a small enough aperture to keep everyone in focus without bumping my ISO up where I would get excessive noise in the photo. (In this case, it was f4 at ISO 400.)

What lesson should you take away from this? If you want to be a photographer, the #1 requirement is that you have your camera ready and available for whatever life throws at you!