A short guide to party photography

This is from my old website, but is back by request.

For a number of years I was known for my party photos because of a website I ran. Whilst I love doing this stuff... I will admit the lack of nightlife in Sydney hasn't really left me with much drive to continue to do it.

When this first went up, it ruffled some feathers, as some of the tips here, some photographers see this as insider knowledge. I have worked and taught many juniors, and honestly, these tidbits are just the first few steps you need to learn to get on your way.

Club photography is an art form in itself. It's low art, it's not a particularly difficult skill to learn (mastery is something  else might I add). It allowed me to interact and meet a large variety of people, and network, but it also allowed me to put my spin on how I see things, how I see people, and to pick up small moments you'd otherwise miss.

There is little money in it as well, and I've been fortunate to get enough work doing this to pay the bills and travel doing it.

Here are the basics of how to shoot in clubs.

There's a lot missing from this short guide, so feel free to email me and ask questions!

The first and most important step is your settings. Do not worry so much about how they appear on the screen on your camera, your screen is small, it's low quality, and shooting raw, it doesn't give you a realistic idea of how your images are going to look.

The second step is the next part of the equation, forget your backgrounds, a rule I normally say is super important, Your number one job here is to frame your subject properly. Repeated motifs here work really well.

Never shoot to low or too high, the focus is on your subject; nothing else matters. If you can see a lot of your background you may find it's distracting, get too close as well and your subject will distort and it will look like you do not know what you're doing, so think of the invisible box when you're shooting, or if you're shooting on a Canon 7D/6D/5D/1D turn on your grid lines.

When it's one person, which is what I prefer (one on one allows you to build rapport and capture something unique), aim for below the elbows. If the environment allows for it, I often try to stop the frame mid thigh. Don't tilt your camera down on an angle, keep it pretty straight on your subject. Let the distortion create a natural vignette that really allows them to stand out basically.

Then rinse and repeat. Over and over. Their is a lot of creativity in the discipline, and it allows your subjects to be the focal point of the work rather than what you're doing.

You'll also notice a stronger presence of women in here, it's the lack of spontaneity and awareness from most men. The inability to do anything that is feminine, or different, leads to ridicule so my challenge always is, to find men who are willing to get weird for the camera. Something I'd advise you to push.

Now, I'm about to tell you to do the exact opposite of everything I just told you, but I want you to realise the rule above is more important than this one. You need to be creative in moderation. There's a good reason behind this as well, people are not viewing party pictures for your creative vision, they're viewing them because they want to be voyeuristic, so it's important in recognising that, that this is about breaking it up, and making sure that the viewer gets a break, and sees something interesting, that makes them slow down, and draws them in.

A good ratio for this is for every 20 party photos, there should be 5 shots that break up the album.

Now, if the context is more interesting than the people, you've either found a really unique and interesting event, or you're not looking hard enough to find interesting people. Either way, make no mistake, I use the 1 to 5 ratio to create emphasis not to take it away.

This I call is creating atmosphere, it gives context to your party photos.

These are photos without flash (low light), spontaneous moments, room shots, people doing weird stuff, artists performing whether it be DJ or live act. They are the shots that then give your album it's unique twist, your unique twist.

Then there's the faux pas, things you should avoid, things that other photographers do, the cliches per say. When you look at the event, when you look at the work, they lake uniqueness, they're full of people being douches, and generally there's nothing interesting, and no vulnerability shown in the people in the shots. 

I haven't talked about editing much in this guide, but I would suggest using Lightroom, shooting raw, finding images you like, and then creating your own presets, there's a bunch of handy youtube tutorials on this.

Finally whilst the ability to mingle in a crowd with a camera gives you a great deal of power over your subjects, and while you may get treated inhumanely and poorly by some (alcohol makes a rude fool of anyone), remember they're people, an easy rule to forget when the work you're pushing is often wild and out there.

Treat the work with respect, treat your camera with respect, and basically don't use this to become Kirill Was Here, there's already one Kirill, and that's enough.