This weekend was my first foray into night/event photography and it proved nothing short of exciting.  As you may or may not know, I have been branching my freelance services out into the field of photography.  This was an interesting step in that direction and there was much to learn from the entire night.

To give a short explanation of the event, it was a Halloween party.  Perhaps party is a bit of an understatement.  Cover was $30 at the door and I was told 2,000 people came through that evening.  Being a Halloween event, everyone was dressed to the tilt in some of the most creative costumes I have seen in some time.  I was covering the event with 2 other photographers, friends of mine who were nice enough to offer the opportunity to me.
With all of that said, here are a few items worth noting that I learned from the night

Take What You Need: Learn as much about the event as possible before going and plan accordingly.  I know that I would not need all of my lenses on hand.  I would be working in confined areas flooded with people, so I would not have the luxury of carrying around a pack, much less take the time to change out lenses.  I guess I could invest one of these days in an extra camera body, but for now, that will have to wait.  Despite having only one camera, one lens, and a comfortable strap, my hands and body hurt the next morning.  It would have been murder to have had more gear on me.  Only the essentials. Here was what I brought inside with me:

• Nikon D80
• Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
• Nikon SB-800 Speedlight with SD-800
• Gary Fong Lightsphere II (Cloud)
• Aftermarket strap (Can’t remember the brand)

RAW vs. JPG: I shot about three 2GB cards in the 4 hours I was there.  The first two cards I shot RAW + JPG and realized I had filled up two of the four cards I brought by 11:00pm.  My buddy said that I might want to pace myself so I swapped over to shooting just JPG.  Looking back, I should have continued to shoot RAW + JPG all night.  I would have had plenty of cards to go around.  Not knowing that at the time, I changed it up.  Getting back into the computer at home and starting to process the images, the final card will take a bit longer because working with Camera RAW is much easier for me.  My next investment will be more cards so that when I go to any event I can shoot and never worry about running out of room. If you are a Lightroom user you might have a more automated workflow which lets you run through your work quicker.

Physical Preparation: I am nowhere near in the shape that I want to be.  I recently lost 30lbs, give or take, and have also recently put some back on.  The lack of routine exercise hurt me.  While I did not have trouble during the shoot, the morning after was a different story.  I woke up sore.  My legs hurt and my right hand and arm were sore from lugging around the camera all evening.  Being in shape never hurt anyone.  If it is a late night event into the early morning, an afternoon nap and healthy dinner will help tremendously.

Think of Everything: Think about everything you would never think about.  Easy, right?  What I mean by that is try to consider needs ahead of time.  For example, I forgot to bring cash with me to the event.  Sure, they had an ATM but I didn’t even want to find out what the fees were with regards to using it.

I have a small memory card wallet, by Lowepro, to carry my cards in.  It easily fits in my back pocket and was extremely helpful during the event.  After filling up a card, I put the full card in my case, but flipped it over so that I knew it was full.

I also dropped new batteries in the Speedlight as well.  I keep an extra set in my bag but I did not want to be bothered with changing them out in the middle of the night and was glad that I did.

It will never hurt to make a checklist a day or two before of stuff to take so you do not forget everything.

The Day After: When you are scheduling an active shoot, it wouldn’t hurt to block off the following day if you can help it.  Doing this gives you a day of breathing room where you can relax and collect your thoughts. I was pretty well worn down the day after and did not feel like doing much.  Had I scheduled another shoot or had something additional planned, I do not feel that the second event would have seen my best effort just because I was so tired.