Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity fundraiser event at Hassop Hall
I had recently had the pleasure of being the photographer at the Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity fundraiser event at Hassop Hall. Very impressive place, in some very impressive surroundings. Too posh for me for sure!
I was asked to do potraits of couples and groups as they arrived to the event, with some PR type stuff as the event went on. I decided to do the job properly and take some strobes and a printer so we could output prints on the night for people to take away with them.
It ended up being a total success - which I'm glad about, as I've never done printing-on-the-night before. It was tight at times, we even had a queue at one point as people, after a couple of drinks, decided they did want a portrait doing after all!
The whole exercise did teach me one thing though, I definitely need a decent second body. I found myself flipping between having the wireless trigger on top of my camera and a medium zoom F4 lens fitted for studio type shots, to then swapping quickly for a flash gun and a faster F2.8 zoom or wide angle for the event itself.
We were crammed in a fairly small space, The Dairy Room, and had to position the two front strobes far too close to the subjects which caused havoc with shadows where we didn't want them. If anything it was a good exercise in what's possible in, what turned out to be, quite a busy evening.
Thankfully, everyone got their print as they left (we did well over 80+ 10x8" prints on Permajet 300 High Gloss paper, printed on a Canon Pixma Pro 9000 printer, you can imagine, it was touch and go - not to mention the sheer amount of ink the printer chewed through).
Another thing became very apparent - there's no way I could have done this on my own - which was the original intention. If it wasn't for my assistant (and wife!), Donna, I'd have floundered for sure.
