Posted March 11, 2023
I have, more or less by default, become my company's go-to photographer for office parties and other events. Fortunately, the company I work for, P2S, has these on a frequent basis. Whenever we leave our cubicles and assemble in our large high-rise cafe space to feast on holiday-themed snacks, or congregate off-site for one or the other annual corporate shindigs, there I am skulking around with my little Pen Ten trying to get everyone's good side.
Originally I imagined this blog being a showcase for my black-and-white street photography. Check the home page again and you'll find no category for Color Event Photography. But I love shooting events, and thanks to a busy calendar at P2S I've been doing more and more of it. Last week, thanks to our annual "summer party" lining up with our Vice-President's retirement party, I wound up shooting two events within days of each other. And maybe it was the practice, but I came away feeling like I'd done my best yet at this strange art form.
In normal life these company photos of mine go into a "Pictures" folder eleven levels down on one of the company network drives, and that's as far as anyone on Earth ever sees them. So I'll break two trends at once, and instead of my latest black-and-white street work I'll give unwonted publicity to a bunch of strangers in the form of practice event photography from two P2S Inc. corporate parties.
The first was our summer party, at Magnusen Park. Spouses, kids, babies and dogs invited, hair down, barbecue, typical outdoor party games.
The second event was a retirement party for Larry Swartz, a major figure at P2S. When I joined the company in 2018 he was the CEO of what was then Notkin Mechanical Engineers, and after our 2020 acquisition by P2S he continued to reign locally supreme as Vice President of the Seattle branch. (P2S' main headquarters are in California.) On a personal note Larry is the best boss I've ever had in my peripatetic career. He's the kind of guy who wields his natural authority only to help others be better, never gives an order without explaining the reasons behind it, never loses his temper, and without wavering his commitment to quality goes out of his way to make the positive culture around him as important as the work. I'm not an engineer -- merely an editor in a back corner of the office, without much interaction with him (though he was my direct report) -- but I'll miss him.
At any rate it was an important company transition, and all of the major California executives flew down to attend. The lot of us Seattle-branchers were in semi-formal, and the kitchen/cafe space was transformed into a dual-bar setup manned by an army of black-attired caterers. There was mingling, chatting, laughing, reminiscing; there were speeches and gift-giving. My remit was to make everyone look good.
Fortunately I've had practice doing photography in that deadly cafe space, with its huge sunflooded windows throwing everyone into silhouette, the light from them fading into a backroom tussle with the overheads that plays havoc at the wine bar with auto white balance. I've learned to shoot with the sun, not against it, and I feel that with judicious post-processing (love Lightroom's new "Select Background" tool to recover highlights) and selective Temperature slider tweaks I may have finally mastered the space.
