The Photoshoot

After speaking with the DJ students that I am working with I decided to organise a photoshoot as they were all interested in getting professional photos for their careers. This was the first time I had ever organised a photoshoot so I did some research into photoshoots and used that information as well as my own instincts to plan and organise it.
I had many factors to think about while doing this and I knew that I wanted to make it the most fun but also the most professional as I could. 

My first thought was where the location would be. I knew that I wanted it to be within college grounds on a Tuesday as this would be the easiest way to get everyone in the same place at the same time, originally I was just going to do it free roam of the college but decided against it as there are a lot of people in the college on this day and it would make it more difficult to take professional photos.
The DJ booth presented itself as the perfect location because it was a place that both me and the DJ students were familiar with, this was important to me because they had this room booked all day on a Tuesday and most of them used the room regularly so they would be in a relaxed environment which would give them the freedom to be themselves and give them the best photos. The only problem was the lighting in the room being terrible for photos so this was a big thing that I had to think about improving. I spoke with the staff in the music block about possibly getting some lighting in the DJ room for the shoot and I wanted to use one of my contacts on the lighting design course (Liam) within the theatre department, I got approved for this so I then started to speak with my contact to see what could be done. 
Liam and I spent a couple of days looking at the DJ booth to see what he could do with the lighting situation and he decided that he could add some colour to the room as well as some back lighting. We used:
X2 boom stands + scaffold pipes 
X4 RGBW Slim pars 
X1 13Amp-IEC
X3 IEC-IEC
X5 Par 16 (Birdies)
X5 Short lengths of TRS
X2 Grelco 
X1 15Amp
X5 G-Clamps
This gave us great lighting that could be changed to fit the needs of the photographer. The Slim pars could have been hooked up to a laptop with NOMAD installed to make it easier to control the lights but as there was a strict time schedule we could not achieve this. 
Finally I had to source a photographer which luckily for me wasn’t difficult, I have a contact who is a photographer and a very good one at that. I trusted him to do the photos so I contacted him to see if he would be interested and he agreed to do the shoot. 

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After all the planning and organising it was time for me to execute the day, I think that overall everyone had a lot of fun and the photos look great. My day went as follows:
At 8:40am the lighting technician (Liam) and I arrived at the college to gather the lighting equipment and set up in the college DJ booth. My first problem of the day was the theatre technicians not arriving until roughly 9:15am, this meant that Liam and I couldn’t get the lighting equipment that we needed when we first got in due to us not having the keys to access the lighting storage room. This was a major setback for us because we then had to rush the lighting to have it set up for 10:00am which is when the photoshoot was planned to start. As we had to rush the set up Liam wasn’t able to get a piece of equipment, Nomad, which would control the lights from a laptop. This meant that the lights had to be changed manually and this caused a moment of delay during the photography process. Setting up took us roughly 30 minutes after the gathering of the equipment and we were ready by 10:10am.

After setting up, I had to make contact with the photographer because he was late to the shoot but this wasn’t a massive issue for us as I had booked the room out for the whole day, the original plan was to have the photoshoot between 10am and 12pm at the latest because the lighting technician had to leave at 12:30pm however we liaised with the theatre technicians and I had permission to continue using the lights until the shoot was complete. We had to give the lights back to the theatre by 3:00pm so this gave us a lot of extra time to complete it. Having this extra time meant that there was less pressure to get the photos taken and this helped the students relax so that they could forget about the shoot and just focus on being themselves for the photos. Due to the photographers camera battery running extremely low we finished the shoot between 1:00pm and 1:30pm, I had been given strict instructions on how to take down the lights and how long they needed to cool down before I could move them and take them back to the theatre. Everything was returned to the theatre by 2:30pm. 

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Evaluation:
Overall the day was a major success and something that I am incredibly proud of because a photoshoot was not something that I had attempted to plan and organise before. Everyone had fun with the shoot which was one of my main concerns because I recognised that the best photos they were going to get were by having fun and being relaxed. Another thing that made the experience more enjoyable was the use of the DJ room because the students were able to use the equipment while the photos were being taken, this created a great atmosphere for everyone as they were able to encourage each other while mixing and they were able to show their personalities. One thing that I would change about the photoshoot is the locations, I think that for a better range of shots I should have looked at doing the shoot in multiple areas instead of just one, this could’ve been achieved through a second photographer doing half of the group and providing a wider variety for the students. Another thing that I would have done differently is allocating more time to the setup of the lights, even though we set up quickly we ran out of time to configure the lights to NOMAD which would have made them easier to control and it would have allowed us to provide the photographer with something easier to work with, however I wouldn’t change the lighting other than that small tweak.