Weekend Engagement - Recalling An Unhappy Performance

Hi all, how is your weekend going so far? I am so glad to again share post on Weekend Experiences, so let's get right on to the prompt that I have chosen to share my post on today.

The prompt that I will be doing a post on is:
Explain a time when you were not happy with your own performance; what happened and why, how did you handle it and what was the result.

Photobooth Operations Always A Happy Ending?
It had been approximately 14 years ago since I started my photography business which included event photography and also running photobooth for weddings and events.

People who know me will know that I am someone whom like to go for job assignments well prepared. What is considered well prepared you may ask. In event photography, I will not go to an event with a single camera body and a single battery. I will always have an additional body with me just in case something go wonky, that spare camera body will be able to ensure that nothing gets disrupted and the show can go on. Same goes for photobooth, I will always prepare an additional printer, 2nd camera body, additional print media etc.

Basically, because I worry that equipment fail during event and it cause me unable to deliver my work since events cannot repeat because my equipment fail. While it is close to 0 zero incident that I ever need to activate my backup equipment, there was that one that incident that made me really unhappy with myself.

The Unhappy Incident
It was an usual Photobooth assignment and I did the usual setup of the backdrop, party props, printer and also the camera to take pictures. However, just for today, I did not have a backup camera as my mentor who taught me photography borrowed it as her camera had been sent for servicing. I thought to myself, since it's my mentor whom need it, lending it to her is no big issue since I've never ever had any camera issues encountered before.

This confidence in my camera not failing ultimately caused the whole unhappiness of the incident. While everything run well for a good 20 minutes, thing went south 20 minutes onwards. The thing that I had so much confidence that it will not fail actually died on me. The battery indicator suddenly blinked at a low level for 1 minute then I could not power it on after that. To me, not a big issue as well since I can always replace the battery and juice up the camera right away. However, when I ransack my camera bag, I realized I did not have any spare camera battery with me. And you might have guessed it, my spare batteries ended up with mentor.

My typical setup for a photobooth is something like this:

A camera mounted on a tripod with studio lighting equipped so as to ensure a good exposure for a good photo to be taken. A typical shot with a good exposure with good skin tone will look like this:

However, without a proper camera and lighting, I am stuck. My photobooth engagement was for 2 hours and I have one and a half hours to go with no camera. At that particular moment, I was very unhappy with myself for being complacent with my camera gear not failing but at the same time worried how should I break the news to the event organizer on this situation.

A Ray of Light In This Crisis?
My heart did sank but like every event, the show must go on. And when I wanted to try to get others to see if they are able to borrow me a camera, that phone that I was carrying is a Huawei P20 Pro which is armed with a Leica camera. Since the phone camera is very capable, why not use it and see if it can deliver something close to a DSLR.

And this was the output:

Not too bad, but some the colours look a little "jaundice" like. With the mobile phone able to do a decent job, I had my trusty Adobe Lightroom opened and did some colour correction, and this is how it looked like after some minor processing:

Not the wow shot that can be achieved with DSLR and strobes, but I did a test print and it is definitely passable. Definitely shine a ray of light into this very dismal situation. I've manage to salvage the situation with a minor tweak to my workflow. A little slower by about 30 seconds due to the extra processing, but end of the day, I was still able to get the job done with no complaints. A sigh of relief for me.

Lesson Learnt
From this incident, as angry with myself I was, I was able to navigate out of this dismal situation and completed my task through some small improvisation. For photographers it is not the most desirable method, but somehow it worked.

What I learnt is on improvisation, not panicking and most importantly, check my inventory list of the equipment I am bringing to event venue.

Closing
Complacency is very dangerous. While having significant confidence is good, it is always good to check against a list and ensure everything is fine before we head out to avoid such a situation. And as a result, I can be happier instead of just being unhappy with my performance due to carelessness.

Have a great weekend!