Quick event photography coverage for Columbia-Barnard’s Hillel, The Kraft Center, as students watch the Super Bowl. Photographing their students relaxing, eating wings, and just being college kids is always a lot of fun to capture.
These photos are from a Thursday afternoon higher education photography style shoot for TestMasters. TestMasters offers students throughout the United States prep classes for the LSAT, GMAT, GRE, SAT, and ACT. When photographing for TestMasters, I am given a structure of how to photograph the class and a guide defining what type of photos are considered deliverable. When photographing, I have to be as unobtrusive as possible.
After I capture student-teacher engagement and “active learning” with some of my own stylized scenarios the class can actually begins (on time!). As the teacher and class get going I sit in various seats around the room. Every few minutes I move to capture a new vantage point.
On Monday, I photographed another full day conference for Shalom Hartman Institute at their Morningside Heights Manhattan, NY office. Most of the photos were candids and some were a bit more staged. The staged photos aimed to show “engagement” and a “shared learning experience”, all of the keywords I often hear in Higher Education Photography. During this conference, I had more time and flexibility to photograph the conference participants in posed groups.
As a NYC event photographer, I always strive to photograph the “5 Ws”; Who, What, Where, When, and Why. I want to photograph who attended the event, where was the event, what was the event’s purpose, when was the event, and why was there an event and not a zoom meeting. For an event photographer, their schedule can be jammed packed with assignments, especially at full day conferences. Other times, the event he/she is photographing can be slow. None the less, it is my job to tell the story of the event and show the event in its best light.
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who represented Connecticut in the Senate from 1989 to 2013 and was chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, spoke to Yale alumni at the Yale Club in New York City. I photographed the event from the sides of the room and from several empty seats in the back of the room.
Playing the role of the Yale Club NYC Event Photographer for the evening I really tried to photograph all angles and perspectives. I photograph from the sides of the event, behind the speakers (remote camera), above the audience and through the audience, to make it feel like you too were sitting in the audience as you view my photos.
Recently, I captured a full day conference for Shalom Hartman Institute at their Morningside Heights Manhattan, NY office. Most of the photos were candids and some were a bit more staged. The staged photos aimed to show “engagement” and a “shared learning experience”, all of the keywords I often hear in Higher Education Photography. I’ll admit it is always tricky to stage shots during a live conference, however I usually can find 5-10minutes here and 5 minutes there at the end / beginnings of sessions to do my thing.
The Downtown Minyan celebrated the completion of their new Sephardic Torah at their NYU Bronfman Center location. The group welcomed both members of their congregation, as well as the community to take part in the prayer scrolls completion. For me, it was a real honor to have photographed this event. This was the second torah completion ceremony I was able to photograph for the Downtown Minyan and the third torah completion I had the privilege of photographing in 2019.
After the group finished the last few characters they celebrated and paraded their new torah through Washington Square Park. Knowing my photos will be used in 5, 10, 50, or even 100 years to tell future generations about this moment is what makes my job as an Event Photographer in New York City so great.
