Bar Mitzvah During the Lock-down
It’s been a while since my last bar mitzvah, so I’m glad I had the chance to photograph another one. Sadly, because of COVID-19, the bar mitzvah was held in a very different way. I felt it was done very well under the circumstances in order to keep everybody safe. The bar mitzvah was a combination of being at the temple, Zoom, and me!
Bar mitzvahs are very special occasions so I make it my duty to get compelling photographs that really tell the story of the event. I’ll find angles and ways of looking at things using framing that zeros in on the subject that I am trying to capture. In the photo above I was able to catch a really nice moment with the parents watching the son conduct the service. They frame him perfectly and I love that mom had her hand lovingly on dad’s back.
With the different nature of this bar mitzvah, I didn’t want to ignore the special circumstances that allowed it to happen. Here’s a shot of the priest on the monitor of the AV person’s computer. You really wouldn’t get a shot like this in your traditional bar mitzvah. A lot was going on behind the scenes here to make this event happen. It was streamed to over a 100 people watching over on Zoom. The temple had their own dedicated person who set all of the streaming up. They did a great job!
During a bar mitzvah it is difficult to get close shots as much of the space is often off limits. During my last bar mitzvah shoot I had to be very far away from the proceedings. During this one, I had the freedom to really move wherever I needed to to get the photographs I wanted to capture. It was great to be able to really get in close to get photographs of the details.
A traditional DSLR camera would not have worked well in this situation. The only people in the room were the family, the AV person, and me. The priest conducted everything via the monitor in another room. If I had been using a DSLR, you would have heard a lot of shutter sounds going off during the proceedings. this would have been extremely distracting. I used the Sony a9 during the entire ceremony to take every photo without a single sound. I do the same for weddings as you never want to cause unwanted distraction from the main event.
For lenses, I primarily used the 70-200 2.8 G-master from Sony as well as the 24-70 2.8 for the wides. I didn’t use an ultra wide lens for the shoot at all. I was a little worried about lighting as I was told there wasn’t much of it, but the 2.8 aperture was more than good enough to let the light I needed into the lens. It’s events like this where a photographer really relies on professional equipment to get the job done right.
Despite being a very different bar mitzvah, it had all the meaning and weight of one. I love being at bar mitzvahs and cannot wait to be able to photograph another one in the future. Please let me know if you are in need of photography or anything! I’m ready to schedule a session with you!