The Ultimate Photography Challenge

Tonight I had an epiphany about photography: the ultimate challenge in photography is to take a normal every day event and get good, interesting, and/or artistic pictures out of it. That must be why you almost only see pictures of celebrities posing at 'the red carpet preview, post-view private party' instead of party 'action' shots. And that's also why you always see the goofiest pictures of polititions in news articles. Typical news media techniques: make the celebrities look special and make the politicians look like clowns.

Anyway, tonight I was the designated photographer at our sons' Cub Scout Pinewood Derby race. My goal was to get some good pictures of the boys and try to capture their excitement. The facial expressions tell most of the stories, so I like to get close shots of their faces (and it reduces the need for a magnifying glass to see which head is on which blue shirt.) However, capturing a good, unposed, interesting facial expression is like trying to do a macro shot of a drugged-up housefly trapped in a 27 cubic foot glass cube sitting outside.

Usually normal everyday event photos, the kind that fill-up millions of family photo albums around the world look like this...

...no one paying attention, including the person looking at the photo.

Or another classic event photo...
...the "I just noticed the camera while I was in the middle of doing something" look, complete with red eye (which fortunately doesn't show up very well in this picture).

Then there are these types of event photos...

...where you get the combination of the two.

So there lies the challenge--especially with how often everyday events occur: getting good, interesting un-posed pictures at your everyday event. Please share with us if you have any tips, techniques, or luck that works well for event pictures.

I guess even posed pictures don't always work either. :-)