My assignment Saturday afternoon was to photograph a session of the LDS Church’s semiannual general conference. The big story was that LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley would be dedicating the church’s renovated Tabernacle. And this session would be held in the Tabernacle, something that may never happen again.
Conference is a challenging assignment. For starters, I had to take on six photographers from the other newspaper all by myself. That’s right, they had six people covering various aspects of conference. When you’re on your own against six people, you’d better not be sitting still.
I analyzed all of the available photo locations and made my plan. The church public affairs department actually hands you a map of the building marked with photo positions and a list of guidelines like asking photographers to move from positions only during breaks in the program, as well as a newly imposed dress code — shirt and tie. These “rules” are fair and only address logistics. None of them affect the content of photo coverage.
My plan for photographs was to start out up close to get my close-ups of Hinckley, then meet up for a quick shot from behind the pulpit, and then head to the back for overalls and the dedication.
Up front, I photographed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, looking for a nice pattern.
It’s been a long time since remote cameras were allowed at conference. No change this year, though the church’s photographers had one rigged up to a post.
One cool thing during this session was that we were allowed to get a shot from behind the pulpit, right under the organ. Myself and five other photographers were led to the bottom of a stairway that led up to the photo position. We would have only about a minute to shoot, one at a time, while Hinckley announced the order of the program. So each photographer would only have about 10 seconds to lean out into position and fire off a few frames. I put my camera on auto exposure so I could spend my 10 seconds on composing the frame. There’s no time to be adjusting settings in ten seconds. You just have to fire.
The resulting image is more about the building and the crowd than the man at the pulpit. But it’s a great angle to have. I love photos like this, where you get a less stylized, more historic look at an event. It’s not perfect, but full of content.
In the next post I’ll talk about the final shot.
This post first appeared here.