I’ve been wanting to dip my toes into the world of event photography for a while now (read this for context). As luck would have it, a local shooting club was holding an event called “Women On Target”, and they need a profession photographer. I’m not a professional by any stretch of the imagination, but it never hurts to ask. Happily, they agreed to use an amateur, and sent me some basic requirements and photos from the previous year for reference.

Women on Target 2025

The event itself was pretty interesting. In order to make shooting sports less scary and more accessible to women, they hold a female-only event. This lets participants try out everything from archery and shooting skeet to handguns and long-range rifles.

They grouped the women into small squads consisting of no more than six participants and one guide to move them around the facility. At each station were a number of safety officers, and at least one personal coach for each of the women participating. This meant everyone got one-on-one attention all day.

Since I was new to event photography, I spent a ton of time analyzing the previous year’s photos and watching various tips and tricks videos on YouTube (this one was super helpful) so I didn’t embarrass myself too badly. The organizers wanted plenty of photos of sponsors, stations, and the groups of participants, but beyond that I had a lot of freedom to find interesting shots.

My Plan

I really wanted to do video in addition to photos, so I brought along an action camera for time lapses and a drone for some fun overhead shots. Throw in another lens, extra batteries, cards, chargers, and a travel tripod and I figured I was good to go. I crammed most of this into a sling, but brought along a backpack as well. Also, since this was all happening on shooting ranges, I needed to bring along eye and ear protection as well.

My idea was setup the tripod with the action cam and let it run to capture time lapses while I shot with my main camera. Once I had everything I needed, I’d switch over to the drone and pick up some photos and video from the air. What could go wrong?

The Cruel Reality of Event Photography

So as you have probably guessed, I grossly overestimated both my time and ability to multi-task. First of all, the event was split up into six different stations plus various supporting areas. These were so far apart the participants were being driven around in golf carts. Participants themselves were also split into twelve distinct groups, and the whole crowd would only ever be in the same place at the same time at the beginning of the day and at lunch. So getting group shots was a challenge in terms of time and logistics.

I spent the morning running around the facility getting photos of all the raffle and auction items, sponsor signs, area setups, and some shots of the facility as a whole. All the participants were together at the event start, which allowed for a nice group shot. Once everyone dispersed, I spent the remainder of the day running down a checklist to ensure I got photos of every group, and at least a few shots of each woman doing something cool. Where I could I grabbed some extra locations photos and a few candid photos of the participants interacting, but that was it.

I lugged around a bunch of extra junk that I didn’t even touch.

Improving My Game

My big takeaways from my first event photography job are pretty simple: overestimate effort, simplify, and spend more time mastering camera controls. Things are going to take considerably longer than I think they will, so plan accordingly. That means I need to take a much more realistic approach to what I think I can do in the given time frame. Finally, I wasted a lot of time messing around with my aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Having the controls down and more shortcuts setup would have saved me loads of time.