“I Know Exactly What You Need.”

When the Boulder County Film Commission wanted photographs of its Creative Industry Night event this week, the film commissioner brought me in and when I arrived, he said, “Do we need to discuss what photos to get?” To which I said, “I know exactly what you want, what to do, what to photograph.” He smiled and stepped away.

He knew I knew. Full coverage. No photos of people chewing or looking bad. Strong photos that show the social interactions. Sponsors showing off their gear to attendees. The presenters. The audience. This online photo gallery is a result of good timing, strong compositions, and tight editing. (Editing means culling the frames that aren’t the best as opposed to toning which is making the photos look the way I wanted them to.)

Afterward, he said I could just give him all the files and he’d edit them. To which I said, “No, I will deliver a professional gallery with edited and toned photographs because I am a real professional.”

There’s no cutting corners as professionals. There’s no handing off part of the job to someone else. (The film commissioner is also a photographer and thought his offer would be time-saving for me.)

Strong photographs of people engaged but looking their best, not embarrassing, not eating, not careless but rather carefully composed photographs. The light was low but rather than blasting a flash, which is often what I see photographers do, I opted to use fast lenses and document the feeling of the room in the photographs.

But interaction was key. These are some of the photos.

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It takes time and effort to make photographs that are storytelling in a sea of people eating and drinking and socializing and seemingly not very interesting-looking. But the photos are there. It takes time to find the best expressions, and it takes a good editor to show only the best.