Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
This week I’ve had the pleasure of shooting a program that my company offers to construction supervisors. Over the course of this three-day program, supervisors build bicycles for disadvantaged kids, while learning some management and leadership skills. It’s actually pretty cool to see these rough and tough guys turn into teddy bears when these kids enter the room. See, we don’t tell the participants who they are building the bicycles for…we just use the bikes as a learning tool. We then invite these kids to have lunch with us and it’s at that moment that the participants realize what’s going on.
This week I’ve had the pleasure of shooting a program that my company offers to construction supervisors. Over the course of this three-day program, supervisors build bicycles for disadvantaged kids, while learning some management and leadership skills. It’s actually pretty cool to see these rough and tough guys turn into teddy bears when these kids enter the room. See, we don’t tell the participants who they are building the bicycles for…we just use the bikes as a learning tool. We then invite these kids to have lunch with us and it’s at that moment that the participants realize what’s going on.
Normally, I don’t have much interaction with this program (although I helped design and develop it), but my administrative assistant (who normally takes pictures) was out of town, so I stepped up to photograph the event…and, well, let’s be honest – I couldn’t have been more thrilled to share my skills with my employer (and of course the kids). I should mention that this was my first time photographing any sort of event like this, so I was a little nervous. Also, our program runs downstairs in a room with NO WINDOWS and horrible florescent lighting. I didn’t have a ton of room to move around, so much to my dismay, I used my 18-55 mm kit lens (which makes me want the Tamron 28-75 mm so much more) and my speedlite.
Here are a few of my favorites from the week.
For this set, I took a more photojournalism approach, but I think it’s appropriate here. And, although I see so many flaws in my work, several of the guys were really impressed with the overall quality of my shots. My manager asked me to put together a press release with one of my photos and a coworker just came by to thank me for doing such a professional job. With all that in mind, I’m pretty pleased.
What do you think?
**Update: I’ve been asked about my post-processing steps, so I thought I’d share. To be honest, I was quick and dirty (unlike when I do a before & after…and really try to make sure everything is perfect). I mostly had to correct curves, levels and brightness (it was challenging, to say the least, to nail my shots with my lighting conditions). Then I ran Coffeeshop’s Little Perk and lowered the opacity (they needed just a little pop and sharpening). Then I ran Coffeeshop’s Butterscotch Vintage action as my final step before preparing for the web. For work purposes, I didn’t got beyond “perking,” but I wanted to add a little more style for blogging purposes. I think b&w could have been neat too.
