My First Paid Gig

Imagine my surprise after receiving a phone call, mere days after making this website, that resulted in my first paid gig. Now to be fair this was not a result of the website, but the owner of the Murder Mystery venue having a client who needed a photographer for his 75th birthday. I blurted out an exceptionally low price, and offered to do the shoot for 2-3 hours that coming Friday evening.

With barely any information to go off of, I arrived with all the gear I had and prepared myself for a fun night. After meeting the client and discussing what they wanted, which was just general coverage and then a picture of the client with each guest, I started. While I did find the venue to be quite pretty, It did leave me wanting in the lighting department. And with my sparse gear and desire to be less noticeable as a photographer, I had no flash to save the day. I did the best with what I had, and thankfully the r6 ii paired with the nifty fifty got me through the night just fine.

While I’m not going to share every last photo here, I did want to log some details about it for future me, because I’m just a fan of numbers. I did take a little over 2000 photos, and about 200 of them made it into the final edit. This is actually almost exactly the same as the Murder Mystery party. And of those 200, I’d say these 7 are the only ones I’d consider for my portfolio. In the future I do hope to be more prepared for tricky lighting situations. Currently I’m eyeing up the Godox iT32 with the X5C mount for something light and genuinely useful.

In the end I was there for about four ours, and really enjoyed my time. The guests were a joy, I was fed which was a pleasant surprise, and I even got to dance a bit at the end while the entertainers sang ABBA songs. All-in-all it’s an experience I’d happily do again.