Advanced Tips and Tricks for Event Photography

Check out this video for advanced event photography tips and tricks. 

Mik Milman is a Los Angeles-based photographer with over 10 years of professional experience. Throughout the span of his career, Milman has photographed for Nike, Adobe, and Adidas, just to name a few. 

I've watched this video a few times now, and it has helped my own event photography tremendously. This niche in the photo world is not my specialty, but with a little practice and self-education you can make a decent amount of money from shooting events, as well as gain more industry connections. 

My favorite tips that Milman mentions are learning how to predict a smile and time your shot ahead of the peak action. To me, these two tips go hand-in-hand. It's great to be personable when at events and like I just said, make new connections, but it's also important that you remember you're there because you were hired to cover the event. 

With this in mind, you can use your personable trait to read the room and to study the interactions of others during the event. This will help you capture the most genuine emotions as well as peak action. I like to think of it as covering a sports game or match. When photographing sports, you want to always be thinking ahead of the players, always thinking about where the ball will go next or who will run where if x or y happens. When shooting events, I like to have this same mindset so I (hopefully) never miss the key shot. 

One other tip that I think is useful which Milman doesn't mention is, if shooting an event alone, using multiple bodies with different lenses. By having one camera set up with a wide-to-mid range lens and another with a telephoto, you won't have to worry about switching lenses to capture a moment that you otherwise might miss if you were fumbling around in your camera bag. 

Watch the video for more great tips, and leave your own in the comments below. What are your approaches to photographing events?