2019 Awards Dinner | Society for Women's Health Research

May 1, 2019

InterContinental D.C. - The Wharf

The Society for Women's Health research host an Annual Gala where they celebrate their biggest achievements, advancements, and innovations in women's health. Some attendees are given an award for their outstanding efforts toward advancements in women's health.

This was our second year photographing the SWHR Gala. With the event being in the same space and same format as last year it was nice to go in knowing what to expect and who some of the key players are. It's nice when we have the opportunity so well that minimal referring to the list of "key players" has to happen. It allows us to focus on our job which is capturing amazing images. The gala always kicks off with a cocktail reception where board members of the SWHR greet attendees. In between the reception and the dinner is a great time for us to gather any groups necessary on stage for a group photo - everyone has arrived but no one is too comfortable in their seats yet. In this case I did a group photo of all of the speakers and awardees. Following the group photo, everyone settled into the dining area for some presentations. I always start by getting a great tight photo of the speakers and then I back out and get some wider photos showing the audience as well. This is a great time to listen to what the speaker or presenter is saying: if they are saying something seemingly funny, it's a great opportunity to turn my camera toward the crowd and get some attendees laughing and having a great time. 

During the dinner break we always make our way around at this one to get group shots of every table. There's about a 10 minute span of time between when they announce the break and when the food comes out, so we do our best to be efficient in kindly getting guests' attention for a photo. We do our best to have gala branding and/or a sense of space within these kinds of photographs. 

Throughout the entire event we are sending key images directly to the marketing manager for SWHR through e-mail so that she can Tweet images out as Awardees are receiving an award, for example. A lot of moments happen in a short amount of time, therefore we very much appreciate the organized shot list we receive right before the event.