I was given the opportunity to work with professional photographer James Goss on a couple of shoots related to the re-opening of Brisbane City Hall (it has just re-opened after a $215 Million facelift).
James was commissioned to take some large group (100-200 people) photos of dignitaries, sponsors and others associated with the redevelopment. The shoot itself involved multiple high resolution photos, (with exposure bracketing) – to be stitched together into a single gigapixel image. I assisted in the setup of lighting and the “herding” of people into suitable positions for the shoot.
Because the shoots involved the Lord Mayor and a number of high profile dignitaries and sponsors (as part of a civic reception), we only had a very short window of opportunity to take the photos. We couldn’t have people standing around waiting for us to get everything right, so the setup was actually started a couple of hours ahead of time – to enable us to be ready – and to test the lighting and settings beforehand.
The people shots themselves took less than 30 seconds – with another 5 minutes or so taking background and panoramic shots to be stitched together to form the single large photo. Each shoot took several hours from setup to pull down – and as James said – the life of a professional photographer can be 95% boredom and 5% panic.
I enjoyed the shoots – and learned a lot – but it has certainly reinforced my desire to maintain my amateur photographer status for as long as I can 🙂
The gallery below contains a (fairly random) selection of photos that I took on the day :
