Buttigieg visits Georgia to promote the Administrations scaled-back infrastructure plan
[NIKON Z 6, 24.0-105.0 mm f/4.0, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 100, 1/400, ƒ/5.6, (35mm = 24)]
I had the privilege to cover Pete Buttigieg, The Secretary for the Department of Transportation, visiting Atlanta, Georgia. There were so many government representatives meeting with him. A few names were Senator Jon Ossoff, Senator Raphael Warnock, U.S. Rep Nikema Williams, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and many others.
Challenge & Solution
The digital media guy for the Department of Transportation asked me to send him photos that he could put up on social media throughout the day. Here are just three of the many challenges I was faced with on that day.
- Packed Shooting Schedule
- No Time to ingest into laptop & edit images
- Anything I would send would have to go unedited
The solution for me was to use the Nikon APP SnapBridge. While it can do a great deal, I used the Bluetooth connection for my answer.
I could shoot RAW with my Nikon Z6 and have the camera download every image I took as a 1620×1080 jpeg to my phone or chose which ones. I started by downloading it all automatically; even when I turned the camera off, it continued to transmit to my phone.
In many of these situations, I realized that I would normally edit a RAW file to get better skin tones––But NO TIME. So I decided to use more fill-flash than I ever do on a job these days.
There were many situations throughout the day where Secretary Pete Buttigieg was often backlighted with very little light in front of his face. This is one example. It would have been a disaster if I sent that to the client to post.
Back in the days of shooting film, this is how I had to shoot chrome film. In a film like Kodachrome & Fuji Provia, you had to get exposure to the camera.
While I didn’t turn the flash on all the time, I was very keenly aware when I needed it.
In this scenario, Secretary Pete Buttigieg is wearing a hat and walking in a tunnel with light at the very end. While there were lights on the wall, as he walked, he went from good morning to backlit over and over. Waiting for the best lighting moment does not work well with the best moment capturing what is going on. Using the flash helped immensely with this situation.
See how many photos you can recognize that I used the flash. You might be surprised that some I didn’t use it.
So do you think you could shoot and transmit photos on an assignment with no chance to edit?
I know I wasn’t so sure. So the days before the shoot, I practiced doing this throughout the whole process. The DOT gave me a Google Drive Folder to upload my images. We tested it together the day before. This not only calmed my anxiety but the client’s as well.
“Thank you all for the amazing work. Stanley, your photos are phenomenal. Can’t wait to see the rest!”
DOT Social Media Manager
I got that at the end of the shooting that day and before I had then gone home and processed all the RAW files from my three Nikons. I was using Nikon D5 w/ 14-24mm ƒ/2.8, Nikon D5 w/ 28-300mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 & Nikon Z6 w/ Sigma 24-105mm ƒ/4 Art lens.
Here is one of the Twitter Feeds from the DOT that day with my photos: