So this last weekend, I nipped up to the Berkshires to help Laura out with a conference she is helping to organize. “Social Impact House” is a Penn State initiative to bring together folks who have innovative and successful social programs with other folks who starting out. Really nice idea, and some really great things people are doing. Check out their website.

I was asked to help out with some of the video, and also found myself official photographer for a few days. A real eye opener! It wasn’t so much the taking photos, luckily the people were easy to photograph and we were in an amazing house – see picture above – in beautiful countryside. It was more the data management. I was continuously backing up stuff. Some good lessons learned which I’ll be using on the road.

Here are some head shots I had to do at short notice. Never done this type of thing before and a bit stressful as they were official! Eeek! Most taken in a few seconds as I had about 20 minutes to do them all, so forgive some wonky ones. I did learn a lot of about portrait processing in Lightroom though. With some basic edits (skin tone, blurring the background, adding warmth) the images are so much better. The trick is to be subtle and not to do that crazy magazine smoothed-out effect.

I am buying the next wedding photographer a drink. Come to think of it, that’s not a huge statement given drinks are free at weddings …