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41 GMADA
The Greater Memphis Auto Dealers Association. The GMADA is a car-show, a soirée and a fundraiser for the Komen foundation. The event provides a pink pace car for the Race for the Cure and local big-wigs gather on Thursday night to see the auto-show the evening before the beginning of the event on the next day. They write a big check to fight breast cancer and almost everyone is "too cool for school," and they do not look at the new car displays.
One annual display is of a virtual race car that you may drive and crash. You sit in the driver's seat and shift, steer and hear the virtual car on a monitor. It is as if the monitor is the windshield. I make my way repeatedly to this showcase, and wreck the car over and over again. I never have to wait for the automobile sales aristocracy because they do not or can not seem interested in the cars. Sometimes their children find the display and I have to jockey them for the driver's seat.
I set up a timelapse at the showroom door at my first GMADA. I speculated that once they cut the ribbon, there would be a flood of people through the main entrance. I assumed the timelapse would show the burst of people and then the flow of people around the showroom until the end of the event. But the big showroom only had a trickle of people from start to finish. You can even count the total number of visitors if you take the time. It is clear, most people at the soirée don’t even visit the display they just opened with great fanfare.
But I am undeterred by bad timelapses. I opted again to try a timelapse at the event. The next year I placed the camera behind the stage so I could catch the crowd as they mixed and mingled in the event hall. I kept the food and liquor in the shot. I thought I would show the crowd grow, watch the event, dance for the local pianist and slowly melt away for the evening. However, the event began just after sunset and the light in the hall fell off by more than 4 stops. I was busy with my other camera and I managed to make another really poor timelapse of the evening. But I had a great time as usual.
The highlight of the evening is always a bunch of "suits" cutting a ribbon to start the show. Of all the contrived events this one seems really campy. They use oversized pink scissors and cut the ribbon at the same time - the ribbon does not stretch across a door they just cut it in front of the stage and it seems so purposeless that it is hard to get participants to take it seriously. No one is invested in doing a good job, because there is obviously no objective.
The overriding goal seems to become the photo, The group is there to make a photo of the action of cutting a ribbon. There are ten people attempting to take that photo. I was one of the Memphis Camera Clubes volunteer photographers at the event to help publicize the GMADA. There was a pro photographer but there were also a dozen people with cameras that wanted to get that one photo also.
As people lined up, I realized that I needed to make a different photo. I did not want to be on the front row as the other photographers work to elbow their way into the front row. I was torn between getting the photo that everyone expects and getting a unique picture.
Posed or candid?
The "cutting the ribbon" is a posed shot that is intended to seem candid. The candid part is the "action" in the photo. It is cutting a ribbon, but people don’t often look into the camera for the actual cutting part. The ribbon cannot be cut more than once, so the ribbon is one moment in time that is some symbolic image.
Obviously there can be group shots before and after the cutting, but those are already very posed because everyone generally is standing behind the ribbon. I think most people know what is going on and realistically, before the cut is the only time that you will get all the faces in the shot.
Most importantly, I do not wish to say anything bad about posed shots, but I definitely have a bias for candid photos of people. Really candid sometimes is a myth, because people know that you are photographing them. The advantage is that the candid photos may tell a story about what the person is doing or feeling that a posed shot is not likely to have.
At the GMADA I think about this as I take candid and posed photos of people. My favorite posed shot is when I use my 15mm wide angle and hold my camera over my head; I ask a small group of people to look up at the camera. It is a unique perspective and standing very close to my subjects, I can still get them all in the shot.
At the same time, that technique may also work for the candid shots, but you don't have the subjects looking at the camera. At the event I took some photos with the people at the small bar tables to look up, and sometimes I snapped some photos from above with people candidly talking at the tables.
So the above is my favorite candid shot of the GMADA event. I called it "Hug the Mayor" even though I know that the center subject in the photo is not the Memphis mayor. He is the president of the GMADA.
One of the things I have learned is to capture photos of people as they come in; as they are saying hello to people they know. These candid shots typically show people authentically smiling and looking friendly. They hug and laugh. The interactions say more than ten minutes later when they are just talking to one another.
While I walk around and take photos, some individuals will pose for me. They will stop and look at the camera and nonverbally signal that they are ready for their close-up. Sometimes one person at a table will take over as I make candid shots and instruct everyone to pose for a photo. I have to take over at that point and act like I want posed shots of the group. I line them up and get some photos, but I never really know how to evaluate them. I will typically pass them along because I assume the people will be expecting to see that photo.
The same kind of thing happens at the Komen Race for the Cure. Most of the time I am using my 200mm lens and framing people at least fifteen yards away. As they get closer I move from the full-body to waist-up shot and some faces. But often the runners don't know that I have a fairly long-lens. They stop in front of me and grab their friends to strike a pose. If I am not paying attention, through that 200mm I may not even see them. But when I do, they are ready to get back to the race and I need time just to get them in the frame.
I have lots of blurry photos of people standing right in front of me during the race. I take the photo even though I know it is not in focus. Next year I will try a second camera around my neck with a wide angle, so I am ready for that shot.
The type of candid shot I am looking for at the Komen Race for the Cure is the runner struggling with a powerful background of the City of Memphis or other runners. I do end up with a lot of posed shots and some are my favorites as people just look up and smile. They are good photos and they are better than the candid shots.
I have rarely used a flash for the events. A flash almost always says it is a posed shot. I think people are generally suspicious of flash candid shots. Maybe it is just me, but I would feel uncomfortable at an event using a flash indoors. At the Race for the Cure, I could use it for fill-flash, but usually I am shooting for quantity not quality.
Below are links to albums to all the Komen events I have photographed, as well as direct links to the Greater Memphis Auto Dealer's Association care shows that I have been to:
2016 GMADA: https://flic.kr/s/aHskMvZNpf
2017 GMADA: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm9YtWYQ
2018 GMADA: https://flic.kr/s/aHskJjxj6L
Komen Volunteer Collection: https://www.flickr.com/photos/timmwheat/collections/72157670578303377/
2016 GMADA Timelapse: https://flic.kr/p/NEFigz
The 2016 GMADA stage
Photo by Tim Wheat.
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