Sample Sale Photography

I'll try to make this long story short - I met Jackie at our neighbors house, she has a website/blog/internet radio show about the local lifestyle here in the South Bay (southbaybyjackie if you want to check it out). She does restaurant reviews, openings, all kinds of local happenings - I asked her if she has a photographer go with her to all these events or does she take her own pictures? She usually has a photographer and coincidentally it is the woman (Gloria) who taught my creative photo classes. Small world. Anyway - Gloria got sick at the last minute and couldn't attend this event with Jackie and suggested I might like to fill in. Me! A very very amateur photographer - of course I said yes I would help, as long as she understood that while I know how to use my camera (in automatic mode haha) I can't do anything fancy!

I've never been to a sample sale before, this one was held at a local country club by Hammitt handbags. They were selling what seemed like thousands of bags at a greatly reduced price -  I didn't know what to expect which was a good thing or I'd have been very worried - it was huge! And Crazy! Hundreds of people there, grabbing handbags like they were the last handbags on earth or something :).

There was a band, an artist drawing on a huge canvas, and shirtless salesmen in one room; a DJ and a bar in another; and a food station that had guys grilling cute little things (veggie skewers, sliders, tiny grilled cheese sandwiches) - very overwhelming I gotta say...but SO much fun.

















I snapped pictures like crazy figuring I only needed to get a handful of good ones, and the more I shot the better my chances were of success. For real, I took 180 shots to get 7 or 8 usable ones - so my tip for you whether you get to play professional photographer or just want to make sure you'll have the right shot is to take LOTS of photos...fortunately we don't have to print all of them anymore, with digital it's ok to shoot a ton and just erase the bad ones!

Thanks to Jackie and Gloria for letting me tag along and take photos, and Dave thanks you for somehow curbing my desire to shop the sample sale myself haha!!