Red Carpet
Depending on the size of your school ball, we start by covering the grand entrance every student makes.
School Ball Photographers
School Ball Photography is undergoing a bit of a transformation, and jeez, has it been long over due! If you are a newly appointed School Ball Committee then you might like to take some time to read everything on this page, you will be glad you did.
In the old days, photographers would come to the ball for an hour or so, capture a few very formal photos and then leave. Because they were not paid to be there, they have to sell their ball images one by one. No sales means no pay for the photographer and because sales were often poor, mainly due to the fact the images were bad and no one wanted them, the photographer would charge massive money for one printed image.
What We Do
Professional Photo Booth
We will have a studio professional photo booth set up, for the entire evening.
Roaming Photograher
Depending on the package, we can offer a roaming photographer who will capture many additional moment throughout the evening.
So how are we different?
At one2one Photography we have been photographing school balls since 2005 and the old way of photographing at balls was fundamentally flawed as no one wants to work for nothing, would you? How was it the band were getting paid, the DJ getting paid, even the staff serving the food and drinks, Yeap, they were getting paid too. So why was it the photographer, the only person at the ball capturing the memories, was working for free? That cannot be right.
What we do is ask for a flat fee of $850 including GST for each photographer and we will work our butts off all night. Once its all over, we edit all your images to a high professional standard and give you all the hi-resolution images. This can be distributed via our online gallery or to the school via USB memory stick. Nearly all the Ball Committees we have photographed for get all their photography costs back, and we are here to help show you how to do that.
We get invited back every year by Schools we have photographed before because our images are wanted by the school ball attendees and our post production editing is perfect. Furthermore, all our photographers do this for their full-time living and are multi-award winning, some internationally recognised, and that guarantees you get awesome images.
We offer pre-ball meetings to ensure we are also well organised and fit into what you want. That's another thing, don't be fooled, we are being paid to work for YOU, so we do it how YOU want. Every Ball is different, and as such our images are also very different.
What do our customers think
The quality and professionalism that one2one Photography Wellington provides Lexus New Zealand ensures we have fantastic photography and video assets to support new model launches. Being a performance car enthusiast means they know the level of excellence we require, and they also have the experience (and equipment) to proactively push the boundaries. The work one2one deliver has been used extensively across media both in New Zealand, and also by Lexus international and other Lexus distributors around the globe.Lexus New Zealand
For the last two years Kuranui College has used One2One Photography Wellington for the school prom and they have been brilliant! Communicating with the company has been very straightforward for both staff and students on the prom committee. The service on prom night has been organised, accommodating and professional; and the photographs top-notch and delivered in a timely fashion. The college cannot speak more highly of One2One Photography Wellington and would not hesitate to recommend them to other schools or businesses.Kuranui College
Our photo session with John from One2One Photography Wellington was great! John was professional, friendly and most importantly made us feel comfortable! The pictures came out great and we were even more pleased that John was able to do some fantastic editing to give us some nice family pics where everyone was looking in the same direction and smiling and not making faces. We have two little boys and getting them to keep still and smile was quite a challenge!Mary Borisova
John did a family photo shoot for us "on location" - at the local playground. For three people not overly comfortable with the camera, John captured some fantastic photos of us and we had a good time doing it. We were really happy with the finished product as well as the price and the terms and conditions (one2one allows you to keep the Copyright to your photos which was really important to us). We'll certainly be using one2one again.Megan Vant
Red Witch launched a new range of guitar floor effects for bass guitars in Chrome. Being chrome, the product was incredibly difficult to photograph. However John from one2one Photography Wellington met the brief 100%. We have a full range of multi-angle images which helped us successfully launch our new product; as our fastest ever/best-selling product.Red Witch
We decided to engage John to photograph our wedding because he set himself apart from all other photographers in a number of key areas: very approachable and friendly, made time to understand what style we were looking for, overall flexibility, position on copyright (which is unique and refreshing), and very reasonably priced. He explained every aspect of the process clearly and always made himself available during planning - including late night Skype calls as we were living overseas. On the day we found John to be very professional and blended into the background. We were very pleased with the final product and would highly recommend his services.Leigh & Karen
Photographic Style
Our aim is to capture who you are and not to 'pose the photo up' and move you on, those days have long gone for us! But its true, good photographers have a style, a way of photographing so it's 'their style'. We offer two types of photography for a ball. one2one is internationally recognised as photojournalists, being able to follow the action and 'capturing the moment', often with a lighthearted edge and without interfering. We absolutely love to photograph this way and it is well known, we all take a better photo if we do not know we are being photographed. The other way we offer to photograph is in groups and shoot against a background to reflect the theme you may have for the evening. We use professional robust camera's and professional lighting to ensure the images are professional and of a very high quality, after all that is what you are paying us for.
How Many Photographers?
We have covered Balls of up to 650 attendees. We have 12 photographers Worldwide, 3 of which are based here in NZ. As a general rule, Ball attendee's up to 200 will require 1 photographer, after that we suggest 2 or possibly 3 for the larger events. By employing 2 photographers, that will enable you to achieve both a good set of quality group images and also lots of journalistic images. We can often capture as many as 1500+ images in a night, we just don't stop taking pictures!
Avoid Black Backdrops
Try and avoid black-black backdrops in very poorly lit areas. The image below looks great but to the trained eye, the black backdrop just absorbed all the light. We could start looking at 2 or 3 lighting set-ups but we have to remember, this is a ball and not a big commercial lighting set-up. Too many lights is risky, impractical and unsafe for all.
Backdrop Durability
You got to remember when you design your photo areas that there will be a colossal amount of foot traffic. The two images below show how the photo area looked at 7.30pm when it started and at 11.30pm when the ball finished. This scenario is just a nightmare for us, constantly clearing the area to ensure images look great. It slowed the whole process down a fair bit unfortunately.
Backdrop Balance is Everything
Finally, this image demonstrates how a backdrop can work well. White is always a fantastic backdrop colour when used with an alternative side colour. This backdrop was 10 meters wide and all the material was purchased from a store for a fairly small amount of money. Backdrops do not have to be expensive.
If in doubt, just get in touch
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, give us a call. We have years of experience and will have encountered virtually every challenge going.
Making Money or Fund Raising
We understand some ball committee's look to raise funds for their school or even a local charity. The photography is often a good source of revenue after the ball is over because apart from the wonderful memories, the photos are the only thing left to remember the ball. Therefore, it would mean that you must have something to sell and something people want to buy, only then you can make money. Many, if not all of our school ball committee's make good revenue's from what we do, and this can be done in several ways, all of which we are happy to discuss with you.
One other thing we do guarantee is to have all of your images ready within 1 week, often sooner and properly edited ready for print. Also, every single image we capture is provided to the committee.