Beyond the "line-up-and-smile" event photo

It was a privilege to provide custom photography service to Livingston Classical Academy this year, including this month’s graduation and send-off to the small, but mighty, senior class of 2023! 

A good, everybody-line-up-and-smile group shot at the end of an event is such a win! A favorite to be sure. But, perhaps, even more memorable are the close-up photographs of the more intimate interactions happening off the main stage. In this post, for example, the real joy of these high school graduates is better captured in the triumphant hand shake with a treasured administrator and the impromptu smile of a favorite, funnier-than-most teacher on stage than it could have been with the usual and usually pretty awkward, "line-up-and-say-cheese" group shot.

Intimate photographs like these are extremely hard to get at events without professional camera gear, however. For this event, it was a long lens on an excellent, low-light camera that allowed me to be far enough away from the graduates to allow natural, human interactions to play out, but also to fill the camera frame with those expressive faces. Especially when you consider the effort, time, preparation, and cost that most often precedes life's milestones, hiring an event photographer is a relatively small investment with the guaranteed large payoff of your having professionally captured and preserved images of the event for years to come. Biggest bonus? You get to forget all about your cell phone and relish the moment while I do the photo-capturing for you!