Deutscher Sportpresseball Aftershow — Event photography
Aftershow party photography in the Alte Oper Frankfurt. The after-show of the Deutscher Sportpresseball at the Alte Oper. After the official part everything…
The after-show of the Deutscher Sportpresseball at the Alte Oper. After the official part everything changes: the hall becomes a dance floor, the light shifts to blue and magenta, the bow tie sits looser. The set shows the ball scarf as a fan item, couples in evening dress in the crush, a black-and-white wide shot of the packed floor, and the lounge under the H'ugo's sign in front of a glowing skull wall.
Photographically that means switching from calm reportage into a night language, in the middle of the same night. Before it, the ball follows the rules of any gala — stage, winners, tables, all steady and legible. Afterwards none of that is possible. It is too dark, too crowded and too fast, and carrying the same clean style forward just produces a run of underexposed gala pictures.
The answer is to use the party's light as a means rather than fight it. Blue and magenta lie on skin, dress and wall, and that is exactly how you know later that these frames were made after midnight. A flash from the front would turn the same room into a brightly lit hall in which nobody can see that a party happened.
The black-and-white wide shot is the exception, and that is why it works. When the whole room consists of five colors, a picture without color is the only one in which you see the crowd: how many people are on the floor, how full it actually is. In color the same frame would have become a pattern.
And the details — the ball scarf, a clutch, a drink in hand — are what date an evening. People in evening dress look the same at every ball; the scarf with the event's name is the evidence of which one it was.
- Location
- Alte Oper
