Event photography is a fantastic genre to build a business around or to help you make a little extra money for your hobby. To help you out, here are seven tips for better corporate event photography.

As a corporate event photographer for the last 13 years, the specialty of business event and seminar photography is one that I highly recommend getting involved in. The benefits of this genre are many.

Event photography pays well.

Typically the events take place on weeknights, which mix very well with wedding and family event photography.

It can lead to steady gigs as you work more with the same businesses, and it can lead to supplementary work such as business portraits or product photography.

But the key is that you have to do a good job to get that repeat business. You will be exposed to a wide variety of situations and many of the difficulties and complications will be somewhat different from what you will see at your typical private family events.

Most important corporate event photography tips

1Learn how to make people comfortable

One of the toughest aspects of corporate photography is that the attendees often feel on guard since the events are usually professional settings.

There are of course the boozy exceptions, but there will be many events that will feel much stiffer as opposed to your family events or weddings, particularly early on in the event.

As the photographer, this can make you uncomfortable as well, but it’s important to fight through that and to not show any discomfort.

First, dress to impress. Then make sure to smile and briefly engage your subjects when the situation warrants, particularly early on.

After some initial pleasantries, you’ll find that people will feel more comfortable around you and you will often not have to engage them again for the rest of the event.

You will, of course, be sneaking around trying to capture beautiful candid moments. But it’s much tougher to sneak around if people are wary of you and your big camera.

If you look and act the part, people will leave you be and will focus on the event.

2Learn to work in bad lighting

That means learning to use a high ISO, getting and using a fast lens, and learning how to bounce your flash.

There will be a certain portion of corporate events and particularly seminars, where the lighting will be terrible. In these cases, you have to do the best that you can. That starts with raising your ISO to let in more light.

I rarely go below ISO 1600 and often shoot at 3200 for these events.

The noise is quite not that noticeable in newer cameras and it allows me to enhance the dark lighting to make it look more pleasing.

You want to balance the background ambiance with noticeable and well-lit faces, so this is where your flash unit comes in handy. I will set my flash to the TTL (through the lens) setting.

When shooting an event that takes most of my focus, here is a setting that helps me to set it and forget it most of the time.

This is the automatic metering setting that allows the camera to choose the strength of the flash, based on your camera settings and the ambient light in the room.

I will sometimes dial down the flash strength (FEC or flash exposure compensation) to -0.66. This will lessen the strength of the flash on the subjects so that the lighting is more pleasing and balanced with the room light.

The problem is that a flash pointed directly at your subject does not have a very pleasing look.

It’s too harsh.

Instead, I will point the flash up and slightly tilted backward, so the light will bounce off of the ceiling and back onto the subjects in a much more pleasing manner.

I also use a small diffuser cap, which diffuses the light and allows it to spread in many different directions.

In situations where the ceiling is too high to successfully bounce the light (note: you can still bounce off a 10 or even 20-foot ceiling, it just means your flash has to work harder), you can keep the flash aimed straight up with a diffuser cap on.

But sometimes you will have to point it directly at your subjects.

This is not ideal, but it still works, and it is often necessary if there are no other options.

3Wait for the best moments to capture engaging shots

This is the most important tip!

Business events are not like weddings where you know when jokes and big moments will happen, or when to be prepared for that special part of the day. There are fewer moments when people will smile, so you have to anticipate them.

I will find a group that looks like they’re having fun. Then I’ll camp out near them and make it look like I’m surveying the room or taking a little break.

I will watch them until someone makes a joke or until they finally have an engaging moment.

This is how you manufacture smiling shots at boring events.

Seminars can be just as difficult.

Five or six hours of photographing an insurance seminar will make your eyes bleed, but you have to be at attention and wait for jokes or light moments.

Most presenters will make their jokes at the very beginning of their presentations. So you need to be extra prepared every time a new person comes up to speak.

4Don’t always use the lowest possible aperture

It’s tempting to want to have a really shallow depth of field for the pleasing look it gives.

Many dark venues will necessitate shooting as wide-open as possible, but keep in mind that you do want your main subjects to be sharp.

If you are photographing a group of people at f/1.8, there is a strong possibility that the center people will be sharp while the people on the edges will be blurry.

Many dark venues will necessitate shooting as wide-open as possible, but keep in mind that you do want your main subjects to be sharp.

If you are photographing a group of people at f/1.8, there is a strong possibility that the center people will be sharp while the people on the edges will be blurry.