Photographing Bridal Shows

I've been doing the event photography for one of our big bridal shows in town and I'm looking for some suggestions to step it up a little.

The shows are very busy with people. Although I do get in before the show, I often find that the booths aren't complete until show time. Not to mention the booths are pretty much on top of each other. I try focusing in on the small wedding details, but even in that case there's busy backdrops.

Lighting can be tricky as well as one of the recent shows in Tampa had low drop ceilings with fluorescent lights.

Here's two blog posts from recent shows I did. I'd appreciate any additional suggestions.

Bridal show in Tampa - http://www.dswfoto.com …-bridal-show-summer-2012/
Bridal Show in Orlando - http://www.dswfoto.com …-bridal-show-spring-2012/

I do the photography for a bridal show in my area, and the show coordinator sends out an email when you sign up saying that if your booth is not set up before the show starts you won't get your promo photo taken. Honestly, if people aren't set up I just skip over them, they were warned. At this show you HAVE to set up the night before so I plan to take a lot of the images then. Then on the day I get crowd shots, food shots (since that isn't set up ahead of time for good reason) and candid shots of vendors.

I'd talk to the people running the show to see if they will send out a similar email to help you out a bit. Mine had no issue with this and preferred it since in the past people get slow and aren't even set up when the show opens! Also, if you don't have a manual flash I recommend that for these. Our shows are usually in badly lit buildings with high ceiling so you can't bounce and I don't bother with OCF so I shoot with on camera flash set really low. I tend to get good results this way.