Photography and People

I have been doing a lot of photography over the past few days of the PA Capitol Centennial. I usually stick with outdoor photography, but I could not resist documenting this once in a lifetime opportunity.

There have been a lot of photographers at this event, so I have been able to compare my techniques to those of others. One instance in particular sticks out; when taking staged group shots of people, I tend to adjust the shot on my end as much as possible and minimize re-adjusting the people. This is no doubt due to the vast majority of my experience so far; mountains and animals don't tend to move when you ask them to. It has become quite obvious to me tonight this is not the best way to work with people after seeing first hand the results that are achieved by coaxing the crowd instead.

In the vast majority of photography I do, I continue to much prefer my current 'journalistic' type approach of trying to be hands-off and capturing the feel of the event without changing it, but in staged shots like this which are obviously staged anyway, I really need to be stepping in and molding the image.