So I went to the D-Day reenactment in Conneaut, Ohio this weekend. It was awesome, I’ll post more about that when I get the pictures processed. In short on the first day I was there – “I’ve gone through 4 batteries, 2 memory cards, walked 8 miles with like 40 lbs of camera gear, haven’t eaten since breakfast… This was an awesome day.” So when I got back to the hotel that evening I was excited to look through my pictures and I noticed a few things I was doing wrong. Call em lessons learned I guess.
- Firstly, I really need to work on my portrait skills. That’s not something I’ve spent much time developing and it shows. So I think I’m going to try and make that a priority going forward.
- I need to have a few ‘go-to’ pose ideas at the ready. When asking for pictures I left it up to the reenactors as to what pose they wanted to make – would probably be good to have a few at the ready though.
- Pictures need to have a focus. When I was browsing though them that evening I could clearly differentiate between the ones I’d call good and bad – it was as simple as the good ones had a clear subject in the picture. The photos where I just took shots of groups of people were not as good. So photo’s need a clear subject – not sure why it took me so long to realize this, but I think that goes back to the first point that I don’t do much people portrait work.
- Check the background and consider what that background will look like when there are other onlookers. It’s super annoying to have cool shots of reenactors but have people in t-shirts and shorts holding an elephant ear in the background. So adjust your position so that when you photograph they are not going to be in the frame.
- It’s important to review your pictures mid event. Because I did this I was able to adjust my strategy the second day and I think that work is much better then the first.
I also learned a bunch about history – more on that later though.