I had my first 'big gig' tonight: A Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce gala at the Hyatt Regency. 800 business leaders from across the state showed up in tuxedos and flashy dresses to fill the main ballroom from end to end.

Two funny things about the gig: I didn't have any idea that it would be so completely huge, and for some reason the Secretary of State, Karen Handel, knows me on a first name basis. Karen is Georgia's first hispanic Secretary of State, and a rather pleasant woman, despite being Republican. In this state, Republican and Democrat don't really say much about someone's politics.

Anyway, I was sort of shocked by the sheer size of the event. Betsy Davis, the staff PR head for the Chamber, immediately put pressure on me by assuring me that every photographer who had come before me had screwed up the awardee group shot at the end of the performance. I told her that I accepted her challenge and I would be the first to defy that awful pattern. Betsy shrugged, smiled and joined the crowd in the lobby. Hey dude, it's your dragon to slay.

After she walked out, I looked around and began to realize what had burned the brave men who had come before me. It became evident that the cavernous space in which I was too work was specifically designed to ruin photographs.

The walls were dark gray. The stage was black. The chairs were black. The ceiling was thirty feet high, black and festooned with a most busy assortment of convoluted sheet metal strips and giant plastic saucers studded with dim, yellow incandescent bulbs that added ten years to every face in the joint. It was ugly. It would take George Lucas' personal army of lighting specialists and about 30,000 watt-seconds of flash to make the room livable. I had two strobes and a digital camera.

Luckily, there was a guy in the balcony with a couple of daylight-balanced spotlights to light the speakers, and the curtain behind the podium was nicely lit with amber and purple gels. I set up a couple of my radio-slaved lights, hid them behind a giant movie screen, set up my camera for grip-n-grins and waded into the sea of tuxedos and cocktail dresses, snapping away with a smile and the flash bounced off a business card jammed into the strobe head.

There were a bunch of speeches, some awards. For such a large event, it went exactly by the books, and I had to admit to myself that working for newspapers had perfectly prepared me for assignments such as these. I could have shot this assignment in my sleep.

The terrible lighting conditions were no match for my Canon 580EX flash. As I went from table to table, taking group shots and grip-n-grins, it sent just the right amout of light to the happy faces posing for me. The room didn't want to be in the photograph, and lowering my exposure to 1/2th of a second and f2.8 was out of the question, so despite being so well lit, everyone in the photos looks like they hosted their gala in deep space.

I passed out tons of cards, and I'll be able to upload the photos to my online gallery for guests to browse and order prints from. That's great, considering I only charged the GHCC $100 an hour to do this job. A little extra goes a long way. Also, hopefully this will be an account that will stay with me for a while.

After the awards were given out, I successfully took a group shot. Those radio-slaved strobes make all the difference. I just picked them up, placed them where I wanted them, posed my nine awardees and blam blam blam...That's it folks! It could have been better, in my opinion. A third light on the background would have helped cut down on the shot-in-a-cave look, but Betsy was in love with the shot simply because it was well-exposed and sharp. Score one for the good guys!

The best part of the entire gig was after the ceremony had wrapped up. A latino band took the stage, picked up their instruments and started blasting out some explosive, lively dance music. The crowd, who had been sitting on their asses for the better part of three hours, was more than happy to take to the portable parquee and get down to business. And as I had expected, they were amazing dancers. I slapped on my trusty 50mm and did a little shooting for me.

Check out the photos!