The Silent Book Club

Plymouth Chapter’s First Birthday

My first event booking

The Brief…

…To come a long at take some pictures of the chapters first birthday celebration. Seems simple, right? But to say I was nervous is an understatement. Not knowing what was truly expected I decided early on to bring everything I had, so; My Nikon D600 with my 3 lenses (the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 G, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 and Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.6-5.6), to cover all eventualities.

Arrival and Setting Up

I got there a little early to allow me to gain an understanding of what the location looked like and started off by taking a few environmental shots and things of interest before the guests arrived. This enabled me to get warmed up and into “photography” mode so-to-speak. There was quite a few things to photograph actually from the secret book swap, where the members brought gift wrapped books to swap, to stalls of locals crafts and decorations all around. Bethany, the co-organiser had put in a lot of effort to celebrate their first birthday.

It was all too soon that the first guests started to arrive and sit down and it was a busy turn out with many groups of people. I took this moment to grab a drink to allow people to settle in I also informed people that I was here to take photographs of the event and asked if they’d mind there photo being taken.

The Event…

When shooting events and portraiture I prefer to capture people in the moment, unaware of the camera. This is mostly because I find it difficult to find “posed” images interesting. They either look too fake and unnatural or too cliché. So putting on my 70-300mm to keep my distance I started to take some images. I found there two 6 main groups of people scattered around the room which main it easier to keep my distance. I opted to get a wider variety of images covering most or all of the groups there along with images of the stalls I even including some images of the books people were reading. I was taking images for a solid 3 hours so towards the end I did start to feel a bit repetitive in the images but I did insure I got a good coverage of the event.

Lessons learned…

I really had a lot of fun photographing the event and learnt a lot… The next event that I go to I would love a 1 to 1 meeting to discuss the shots the organiser needs or wants. It’s helpful to understand before hand so I can insure I bring the correct gear as it would have been nice to have a flash gun. The other lesson learnt is that I need to be far less timid to get the shots needed.

Below is a gallery of some of the shots I took from the group. Here is a link to the clubs facebook page if your interested in joining.

Thank you for reading

Paul :)