Candid Photography Curiosity - a survey from an 'old guy'
 

Hello all,
I was a Pike about fifteen years ago and worked on my campus 'Flash Photo' (candid photography business that shot parties on film cameras...then a couple of days later dropped off "contact sheets" at Houses for fraternity and sorority members to order.) I worked almost full-time in addition to my classes and House involvement. My life revolved around the Greek social system. It was a blast and always interesting. The 4x6 glossy photo was a huge part of Greek life.

I caught up tonight with a few old brothers/coworkers and we recollected our days shooting pictures: from bid days to BSLSs to formals to functions. We're curious if the 'candid' business is still around (we're far from any large campus to drop by and find out.) We're guessing it is, but greatly changed and probably diminished... "In our day" things were still film-based. No one used digital images or cameras. We did a quick Google search and found this site. We were hoping you could give us a decent cross section of what 'candid photography' is like, now that things are all digital. We'd appreciate any stories, descriptions or opinions. Here are some questions (of course pick and choose if you want).

*Do you have a "professional" photographer shoot your events? And if so, at just a few events- or most events? [in our day, even small trivial events were shot...]

*Do the businesses charge for the photos just to be taken? [in our day it was free cause the biz sold so many prints that it covered all costs...]

*As I said, we were always collecting prints. But now I can't imagine college kids caring for them. Do students order physical prints much anymore or are they just for special occasions (e.g. to put into scrapbooks or sorority 'boards'?)

*If you use a candid photo business to shoot your parties, do they keep the digital images (enabling you only to order prints)? Or do they turn the images back over to the House(s) (presumably so you can share via Facebook or some other photosharing site)?

*Do Houses use a photo sharing site or do you just share photos here and there using email and/or Facebook?

*Free form question: how are you all documenting/archiving your experiences in your Houses? [In our time, Houses-esp. sororities- often had elected 'historian' positions...basically just kept scrapbooks.]

Thanks for helping us satisfying our curiosity...

1) There was a pro photographer at an AXO officer training I attended. It was held at SMU- I'm not sure if it was just a campus service or a pro service or what. My chapter also had a student photographer at our Pearl Ball this fall, shooting candids and posed photos for us.

2) Unknown about the pro. We paid the photographer at our semiformal.

3) I have digital copies of most everything. However, for my dorm room, I have several prints. People still get prints, but most of the time it's for framing/random posting around.

4) I know that they kept the digital copy with the company we used at SMU. I don't know if you were able to download the digital copy without a print- I'm sure the digital copy was online with a watermark over it. Our student photographer gave us all the digital copies of the photos, and we were able to order whatever we wanted. I guess this was because we paid for them to be at the event in the first place.

5) We just use Facebook, really.

6) We still have a historian position, who does create a scrapbook of the past semester.

Hope this helps!

I've been an alumna for quite a while now, but this is the link to the company we have used for our last two Conventions. It does look like they do smaller chapter size events also.

http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/store.aspx?p=19373

That can give you an idea of how they operate and what they charge.

We had the "Picture Man" come to our larger events (the social hierarchy at my school is/was house parties<all-house mixers with a single sorority<4 or 5 chapter parties at 3rd party vendor - the Picture Man would only come to 4/5 house party events) . I was in school (2001-2005) right at the time things were transforming from what you described to more digital stuff. The contact sheets were definitely more common when I was a frosh than a senior, and I think now, most stuff is online. I know that the guys older than me used to buy a lot of the photos, but that was getting rarer by the time I was in school.

My little brother is in the chapter now, but he rarely ever leaves the primers to get to the 3rd party vendor site (he makes me ever so proud :rolleyes:) so I doubt he knows if this company still exists.