This was a very exciting event to be witness to. Hosted by the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine (FPM) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), a group of doctors and non-clinicians gathered to discuss and tackle the lack of diversity in clinical trials, something that has had disastrous impacts on marginalised groups.
The subject matter was mostly beyond my understanding however there was a buzz in the room and attendees were clearly relishing the opportunity to discourse on a topic with colleagues who had a mutually shared ethos.
Tough venue
The venue itself was very challenging to shoot in. There was a raised beam running the length of the table which meant that to avoid people being ‘chopped in half’ I had to get very creative with my framing. This mostly involved me using the screens on the back of my cameras to frame my shots, as opposed to the viewfinders. The other problem was the very harsh spotlighting, which I got around with some use of flash as well as post-production to even out the exposures.
Sometimes worse = better
A further note on the post-production. Modern cameras are so good at their fundamental job of gathering light that the resulting images can occasionally look a little too ‘clean’. With this event, which took place at the end of a working day in an ill-lit venue with a speakeasy vibe, the images looked just too crisp to my eye so, in an effort to better reflect the atmosphere of the event, I intentionally made the images ‘worse’ by clipping the highlights and shadows, and by adding some artificial grain to them.
The photos
Below is a small selection of the 50+ images that were sent to the client. I was delighted to see that participants were sharing them via LinkedIn the following day.
