Captured images at Analysis & Solutions Consultants annual holiday event.

Every year, Dots Oyenuga, owner of Analysis & Solutions Consultants, honors his engineering team with a holiday celebration. He is magnanimous in his thoughtfulness and selection of location for the yearly event. This year, Dots invited his team to L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills to delight in the ambiance, the food, and the incredible hotel staff’s service.

I had the opportunity to photograph the event once again. I began by taking care to document the details that made up for the joyous ambiance, such as the flowers, table setting, wine display, and some of the staff setting up the tables. Photographing the guests entering the room continues to tell the story of the day. Then mingling abounded with some excellent wines (Dots is a wine connoisseur). Once the guests sat down to eat, I put my camera down, and as usual with Dots graciousness, I was invited to sit down and enjoy the food. Generally, I do not photograph while people are eating other than taking photographs of some of the dishes as chewing shots are not appreciated by the guests.

At several moments during the luncheon, guests got up to mingle again, and up I went with my camera to capture handshakes and hugs. When people settled down with dessert, I steathily took out my long lens and did some candid shots where no one knew that they were being photographed. This allows for a more vivid representation of the actual energy during the event.

Finally, Dots gave a wonderful talk to his team on his gratitude for their accomplishments. People were singled out to stand up and add their thoughts during this time, which really helped me get a sense of this intelligent, skilled, hard-working yet fun-loving team of engineers. At the very last, we did a group shot of the entire team in the beautiful event room at L’Ermitage. And, dots invited all to remain, if desired, to have a dinner on the companies behalf. A group of fortunate people!