I've photographed several golf tournaments at Tain Golf Club and I usually hang around afterwards to do pictures of the prize-giving ceremony on my own time, just for completeness. Those pics are generally quite poor due to cluttered backgrounds with lots of light fittings, windows and pictures on the walls.

Yesterday I was there specifically to photograph the prize-giving for the sponsor, Balblair Distillery. So we decided to get the job done right and set-up a backdrop. And I wanted to shoot f/8 @ ISO 100 so I set-up a studio strobe with a 100cm softbox. This set-up was still not ideal as I didn't have a lot of room to work in, so I had to shoot around 70mm and I couldn't use either a fill light or a hair-light. But it was the best of limited options.

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As always it's good to plan for all eventualities and I would have put money on the club committee wanting a group shot with the sponsor. So I used a full 3m wide backdrop and lit the full stretch. And sure enough…

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Here's a shot from a previous prize-giving at this location. This shows pretty much the whole area available for doing the photos. As you can see it's not a case of having to find a clean background, it's a case of there simply not being any clean backgrounds available. And that's not even taking into account the number of people standing around.

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Yesterday's shoot went perfectly with one exception: I'm too polite! The photos were done at one end of the bar and we'd cleared away a few tables so I could set-up the strobe to frame right. I needed to keep the lighting angle fairly sharp in case anyone was wearing glasses. Just as I was getting the strobe set-up a couple came over and asked if they could move a table into the place that I had reserved for the strobe. Well of course I didn't just say yes, I actually went and got the table and chairs for them! What an idiot I am sometimes.

So anyway I then had to put the strobe to frame left, quite close to me, producing some nasty reflections in people's glasses. Took a couple of hours to remove the reflections in Photoshop.

In all seriousness, though, I think this was the right way to handle the situation. When you're working for someone you are effectively representing them, so you need to conduct yourself as if you were any other employee. So if someone asks you to do something then the answer is yes and you need to work around any problems you create for yourself. It's, uh… par for the course. :-)