We shoot at numerous different venues where our clients host their events and the like. These venues can be a mixed bag, and we make no qualms of criticising particularly bad venues (we're looking at you, school assembly halls and university lecture theatres).
We however also shoot events hosted at a lot of awesome venues, and we like to give occasional shout outs to the particularly great event spaces and who knows, it may even help our clients too when deciding on venues to host their events too. So we're doing a round up of some of the venues we've shot at in the last few months. We don't get paid to say good things about these venues, this is just honest thoughts and feedback.
Let's get into it.
4. Stomping Ground Brewery
100 Gipps St, Collingwood 3066
Our first venue on this list takes us to Stomping Ground Brewery, a beer hall located in Collingwood (Stomping Ground Brewery Co) also have venues in Moorabbin and Airport as well).
Befitting of an independent brewery located in an inner city Melbourne suburb that has gentrified significantly from its working class roots, Stomping Ground has a vintage industrial design style that pays homage to its suburb's working class heritage, and is awash with warmth;Â which was more than appropriate for the event that we shot there.
The warm, golden hues of the architecture inside the venue is also balanced out beautifully with the greenary of indoor hanging plants that adorn the space. The part of the venue we were in also has loads of natural lighting thanks its rooftop windows.
As mentioned above, it's clear that the owners, in the design of the venue, eschewed a modern minimalist design as is common in a lot of bars, cafes and restaurants in favour of a more 'busy', vintage industrial aesthetic (though this is certainly ombined with some modernist elements as well).
We're certainly not complaining about that though - if anything, we think the aesthetic adds to the character the venue and of the photos we took, rather than detract.
In terms of venue lighting, you don't have any fancy stage lights or the like here. Thankfully, the formalities of the event that we shot here were during daylight hours so we were able to take advantage of the natural lighting on offer.
The venue lighting there is though is warm and takes on the vintage style design of the rest of the venue, and is more decorative rather than catering for events. Outside of daylight hours, venue lighting alone has a certain dark flatness about it and as such, events with formalities taking place outside of daylight hours will require additional lighting, such as use of a camera flash.
This is a space suitable for any small events numbering less than 100 attendees with a combination of standing and sitting. At the upper end of this range, however, the space does become cramped - which can be a problem if lugging bulky gear and equipment around and trying to find positions to get good shots from.
From a photographer's perspective, we find the venue overall to be great. Overall rating: 8/10.
3. Theatre Royal Castlemaine
30 Hargraves St, Castlemaine 3450
Our next venue is Castlemaine's Theatre Royal. As you can probably gather from the name alone, Theatre Royal hosts live musical and theatrical performances.
Located in central Victoria and established during the Victorian gold rush, Theatre Royal's design style combines art deco and period heritage influences with warm colours and lighting throughout - which is very similar to a lot of heritage theatres and town halls throughout Victoria. Stage lighting itself is subtle and minimalist.
This allowed us to shoot good images of the stage (keeping in mind that we avoid using additional lighting when shooting live shows), though it was next to impossible to shoot the audience.
One of its drawbacks is the seating layout, which inhibits maneuverability around the venue.
As an example of this, the very front row of seats sits right at the very front of the stage, to within less than a meter. Combined with speakers and aiming not to obstruct the audience view, it made it difficult to briskly quickly move around. It's not uncommon for venues to require a photographer to have to go around the long way to get from one side of the stage to the other; however even the back of the audience area on the ground floor was cramped.
On a more positive note: we also had free access to the upper seating level of the theatre as well, which was a nice change of pace as more often than not - these levels of other similar venues are out of bounds or only accessible with supervision of the venue staff and allowed us to get wide shots of the stage area at will. The upper level is also more easily traversed.
Despite the major drawack described above, we found Theatre Royal has a lot of period character, and is generally a good venue to shoot at. Overall rating: 7/10.
See more: Tarab Ensemble performance in Castlemaine: "In the Shadows of Music"
2. Aerial
17 Dukes Walk, South Wharf 3006
We depart from the vintage aesthetic of the venues listed above and enter a modernist aesthetic with Aerial, an events venue located in South Wharf.
It's main event space has neutral lighting - a feature typical of venues with a modernist aesthetic - and a dedicated stage area with a clear spotlight that focuses on the speaker. The reception and cocktail area also has a modernist aesthetic but with cooler lighting.
As we were there after daylight hours, we can't adequately rate the venue's natural lighting but the main event space is filled with wide windows on all sides (except for behind the stage area itself), so for events held here during daylight hours there's likely ample natural light with views of the Melbourne CBD.
We found the lighting to be great. Outside of posed group photos, the event space itself required no use of additional lighting, and we were able to shoot both speakers and audience members alike with ease.
We did however find the lighting covering the audience area to be somewhat spotty. As can be seen in the image above, some members of the audience are clearly illuminated while others are in the shadows.
This works great if zooming in on individual audience members, who are illuminated by light, for candid photos as seen below, as it creates contrast between the subject and their surroundings - but the spottiness can be a little distracting in wide shots of the audience.
The stage/podium spotlight is also a great touch, and for much the same reasons as described above, is a major help when it comes to taking photos of video of any speaker on the stage addressing the audience. The subject being illuminated creates nice contrast.
We also found the venue easy to move around in without getting in the way of the audience, and there's plenty of space between tables. Furthermore, for videography, the venue has a dedicated audio recording desk, so there's no need to worry about the quality of audio either.
Overall, Aerial is a great venue to shoot at. We give it an overall rating of 8/10.
See more: 2026 Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize honours Randa Abdel-Fattah
1. PICA (Port Melbourne Industrial Centre for the Arts)
1 Thackray Rd, Port Melbourne 3207
The final venue on this list: PICA. And frankly, it's excellent.
As you can probably gather, PICA has a modern industrial aesthetic, and befitting a venue that hosts big name international modern musical acts and can host an audience numbering more than 5,000 people; it has the bells and whistles in terms of stage lighting and special effects and we had zero trouble shooting here.
No matter what time of the day, it's difficult to not take a good photo here. During daylight hours, as the stage and audience area is an open air space, there's a bit of natural lighting. This can be a little distracting in the resulting photos if taking wide angle shots of the audience but it's not the end of the world.
Where the venue really shines though is at night, when you're relying on the venue lighting alone without any natural light. The stage lights not only backlight performers (which allows for some stunning imagery of the performers themselves), they also shine onto the audience - while another set of lights on the roof over the audience shine onto the stage, illuminating the performers.
While we would recommend still using a flash on a reduced intensity when taking photos of the audience, and at this venue you can definitely get away with using a flash without annoying people (as the stage lighting is already very full on), it's certainly possible to get good looking wide audience shots without the use of a flash. Additional lighting isn't at all needed for photos of performers on the stage area.
There's also loads of clearance between the front of the stage and the front of the audience, and barricades separate the audience from the stage area. Hence a photographer or videographer is able to move from one side of the stage to the other, and swap between shooting the audience and the performers, with ease and without getting in anyone's way.
This venue gets a rating of 9/10.
That concludes our event venue around up for the last few months.
We provide photography and videography services for all sorts of events in Melbourne, Geelong and all across Victoria. If you need a photographer or a videographer for your event, get in contact for a quote.
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