Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui asked me one question while we were photographing a block party at Cambridge Community Center.

“Can you photograph a graduation?”

I said yes.

In my head, I was picturing something small.

Then Tosin followed up with the actual assignment.

The graduation was Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Nearly 500 students would cross the stage, and the Mayor’s Office wanted a photograph of each student with Mayor Siddiqui as they received their diploma.

The school already had photographers covering the larger ceremony. We were not being hired to document the speeches, performances, crowd or full event.

We were brought in for one exact moment.

We just had to get it right nearly 500 times.

There would be no retakes.

We already knew Mayor Siddiqui and had photographed and interviewed her before. She was familiar with our work, which helped lead to the opportunity.

Once our quote was accepted, the assignment sounded straightforward on paper.

A student would walk across the stage, receive a diploma, pause beside the mayor and continue moving.

In practice, every graduate would only be in position for a few seconds. Some would stop naturally. Others would keep moving. Some would look directly toward the cameras. Others would look toward family members, school staff or somewhere between the two photographers standing in front of them.

There was no opportunity to ask a student to come back and try again.

Once they left the stage, the moment was over.

That was the part sitting with me as the ceremony got closer.

I am a perfectionist with my work. Missing one photograph out of hundreds might sound like a small percentage, but that one photograph belongs to someone. It could be the picture their family was waiting to receive.

I did not want the size of the assignment to become an excuse for missed photographs.

Another photographer was positioned beside me. She had been hired through the school and was working within camera settings established by her employer.

Before the ceremony started, we talked through how we planned to photograph the graduates.

Her setup used flash at approximately f/7 with a specific crop. That created a decision for me.

I could also use flash and risk having two flashes fire during the same brief moment, or I could photograph the ceremony using the available light.

A student might blink when the flash fired. If I only had one clean opportunity and the student blinked, that photograph would be gone. Flash would also limit how quickly I could photograph several frames during the short pause with the mayor.I decided not to use it.

Instead, I raised my ISO into the range of approximately 1200 to 2000 and kept my shutter speed fast enough to stop the students as they moved across the stage. My camera could handle that ISO without creating a problem in the finished photographs.

More importantly, shooting without flash allowed me to take several frames of each graduate.

That gave me protection against a blink, an unexpected movement or a student looking away for a fraction of a second.

It was a technical decision, but it came down to something simple.

I wanted more than one chance inside a moment that would only last a few seconds.

The other photographer and I were covering the same interaction, but we were not working against each other.

We stayed close so the students would not have two cameras positioned far apart. The greater the distance between us, the more obvious it would be when a student looked toward one photographer instead of the other.

Mayor Siddiqui naturally looked toward my camera first. The other photographer allowed me to lead from the right and adjusted her position so she could still get the photograph without pulling everyone’s eyes too far away.

The mayor would then look toward her, giving her an opportunity to use flash after I had completed my frames.

That coordination mattered.

We communicated before the ceremony and continued checking in throughout it. We talked about whether the students were looking in the right direction, whether our timing was working and whether either of us needed to adjust.

What could have become an awkward situation with two photographers standing side by side became teamwork.

We both had a job to complete, and early communication gave us the best chance of completing it without disrupting each other.

Once the graduates began crossing the stage, there was no time to overthink the decision.

Name called.

Graduate approaches.

Diploma handed over.

Pause.

Photograph.

Then the next person was already moving into position.

That sequence continued through nearly 500 students.

The available-light approach worked. I could photograph several frames quickly, check the important details between students and stay focused on the next person entering the stage.

When I reviewed the collection, fewer than ten photographs fell outside the standard I wanted. Those were mainly situations where students were unsure which camera to look toward, rather than exposure problems, blinks or motion blur.

For an assignment with that many people and that little time per photograph, it was a major win for me.

But getting the photographs was only the first part of the responsibility.

While I was photographing from the front of the stage, Iris was positioned to the side with the graduate list.

Her job was to follow the names in order and check off each student as they crossed.

That system worked until groups of graduates began being called outside the expected sequence.

Once that happened, the list could no longer be trusted as a direct match for the order of the photographs.

A file might be the 150th image in the sequence, but that did not guarantee the person in it was the 150th student on the original list.

This created a much larger problem than keeping the gallery organized.