UMNO | Historical Assignment

This is actually truly a historical assignment, I’m talking about politics in Malaysia. Usually I don’t like to publish my official job here, I don’t want you to get bored with all those political figure but this one is different. It was not an easy coverage, a lot of photographers here, all great angle are fully occupied by a photographers, they just don’t want to miss anything from any angle. It was historical indeed to welcome back former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad taking his busy life even after retired to come to this UMNO annual general assembly and what surprise others is that he walk to the stage and shake hands with his “friends” there, especially with Malaysia incoming Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and Prime Minister himself Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. I don’t want to write about politic here so much, I guess you can read the whole story somewhere else, I just like to focus on photography aspect here.

About photography, I’ve heard my friends complain that, they are running out of memory, their battery camera runs dry, for me, to cover this historical event, we as a photographers must be 100% ready. The night before assignment, please make sure your camera battery fully charge, make sure also to bring extra battery, most photographers here are using 300-400mm lens, so the battery run dry faster than if you are using wide angle lens.

Please format your card, so you don’t wasting your time formating your card when you change your card here and make sure bring extra memory card. The best thing is if you can bring an additional camera body, I mean bring two camera if that is possible, one camera with wide angle lens and the other with telephoto lens, 300mm or 400mm is a must here, there is not much times to switch lens while covering this event.

Things can happen unexpectedly like picture above, nobody expect that Tun will come down from where he is sitting above the hall to the stage. If you are running out of battery or memory card, you are in trouble, this is not a model shooting where you can repeat again and again, this is once in a lifetime coverage, if you don’t get it, you don’t get it.

For me I’ll always make sure that at least I’ve another 100 free shots on my memory card, if there is only 50 shots left, I’ll change the memory card, I don’t want to gamble here because during this event, I shoot continuously in burst mode so the memory can filled up pretty quickly, just to tell you the truth, I don’t get 100% sharp image, some are blurry or shaking and few of them are a bit underexposed because my flash could not recycle fast enough in burst mode, I did not use external battery for flash because I don’t have it.

What I’m trying to share with you here is that be prepared for something that will happen, unexpected thing do happen in this kind of events, so get ready…