One thing I have realized is that I am terrible at predicting what will be successful. The first event we had was a bowling night for Dads and the kids. I never thought it would work, it was a big success. Then they planned this dance on Friday. Not gonna work I said.... sold out. So, from now on I'll just go with the group on anything they say.
As I tend to do with most groups of this nature, I've basically just been the photographer. I take pictures for the yearbook or if it's possible, try to do something else that will benefit the group. So, this Friday I will be setting up my location portrait studio to take pictures at the dance.
When it comes to this kind of portrait work (proms, dance, etc) I'm a minimalist. I've never been a fan of painted backdrops that are supposed to look like a balcony in the moonlight but instead just look like a sheet that's been painted to look like a balcony in the moonlight. With the dance on Friday I've decided that I want to focus more on faces and skip full-length shots (it's not a prom, after-all). So, I'm going to shoot against pure white. Another advantage of white is that you can take pictures from multiple years and combine them into a collage or wall display at some point without having all the different backgrounds clash. For example, if I take the pictures at your dance school, you can get a collage with five years of pictures and it will look really nice because they all match. More after the jump..
Using pure white for a background may seem a little stark at first but I really like it because there is nothing to take away from the subject... no distractions. Also, it makes it easy to design mattes and borders that don't class with the background color... since there is no background color.
For the dance on Friday (which has a Valentine's theme) I designed a nice pink border for the prints. Below is a sample using a picture of my daughter Mackenzie. I'll have the Dads take a knee and hug the daughter in tight so I can shoot waist-up.
Offering the pictures as part of the ticket price makes the whole event seem a little nicer (I'm doing the whole thing for cost).
More of my work is available at http://www.boorayperry.com/
