Shooting the Event

I love shooting events.  Places with lots of people.  Lots of people means lots of faces, lots of reactions, hands clapping and fists in the air.  Cute kids and dogs in crowds make for good shots too.  What are some of the things you should look for when in a crowd.  What makes one shot stand out?  

  Look for action and tell a story.  It is obvious what is going on in this shot I took at a political rally.  The speaker is at the microphone.  The crowd is patriotic.  They agree with what he is saying.  Notice the hands clapping and the arms in the air.  Try to finds ways to let your audience know something about what is going on and what the picture is about.  

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Another political rally.  This picture is not useful for letting the reader know exactly what is happening, but it is useful for setting the tone.  Obviously it's a "Tea Party" type of rally.  The iconic yellow "don't tread on me" flags let everybody know.  This type of shot sets the stage for more to come, or, accompanies a printed story.  There is still action involved.  The flag vendor in the foreground is obviously in motion and frames the crowd in the background nicely.

The set-up and framing of this shot lets you know that this is another political gathering.  This time candidates are running for office.  The reporter with the microphone sets the action.  It could have been cropped or I could have changed positions to only show the candidates with the signs and the reporter but, I think, that could have looked somewhat "sterile".  I wanted some of the crowd in the shot to let people know it was a rally or townhall, or candidates forum of some sort.  You don't need to include the whole crowd, just enough to represent what is going on.  A nice, slightly out of focus shot of the back of the crowd does just that.  The fact that the seven or eight people in the crowd are so close together makes you think it was a big crowd.

Take your camera everywhere you go and practice crowd shots, use your eye to look for action and context to tell the story, and if you get that "perfect" shot, don't hesitate to submit it to your local newspaper, they all have websites now that allow you to contact them.

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