Big Dill Pickle Party Baltimore 2025

A Pickle Party?

That’s right; a pickle party. An entire weekend dedicated to everyone’s love of pickles and all pickle related things. This includes a lot more attire than you might expect! When I initially stumbled across the instagram page for this show @BigDillPickleParty , I was excited to see it taking place in my new home of Baltimore, Md. I immediately followed the account, and sent the page to my wife so we can both go over all of the ticket options. Much to my surprise, this simple action would be what initiated one of the wildest weekends of photography I’ve had to date. The owner of the show, Kevin, dropped me an email a few days later inquiring if I’d have any interest in photographing the event for them. I of course enthusiastically agreed, and even pitched him the idea of my Pop Up Studio, just to see if he thought this would be a solid fit. One brief phone call later, we had a deal and a contract struck! Genuinely one of the most professional organizations I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

@JessKnowsTheDeal

Jess Knows the Deal attending the Big Dill Pickle Party in Baltimore 2025

The Setup

Being my biggest show yet in Baltimore, I wanted to try something new for this setup. I kept the typical 5 point lighting, again using all Godox lights with the X3 trigger. I kept a green gel on the back edge and a purple on the right edge, with a little twist to obtain the aqua/cyan color in the above photo. Just left of the green light and around 10 feet in the air I used a simple barn door modifier with a custom light blue gel on top. Initially intended as a hair light, early experimentation showed it blended with the solid green to yield this beautiful and unique color option that I’ve been trying to secure for a while now. This also allowed me to turn off the green and purple and simply have an ambient blue light in the background to fill my scene with. One more option added to the booths setup that allows me to be as flexible as possible. However, this wasn’t main change to the setup.

Pickle People Are Fun

While I was warned that the show would be very lively and exciting, I clearly did not appreciate how passionate for pickles this crowd would be.

Tethering

I’ve used tethering many times in my home studio, but have always avoided attempting it at these conventions for a very simple reason; I move a LOT. The idea of having a flimsy cable attached to my camera at all times, hoping it never comes unplugged or, more likely, I never trip on it, sounded truly awful. I experimented with this quite a bit at home though and found if I used a cable that was much longer than I could possibly need, the issues became much less severe. I wound up using a Syntech cable meant for VR headsets in white. This cable was thick, bright, and had a large right angle connector on one end that would give me a much more stable connection to my camera, the Canon R6 Mark II with the battery grip attached. This simplified my setup tremendously, giving me a much finer degree of control over exposure as my calibrated laptop screen is so much larger than my rear screen. Removing the step of needing to export from the SD card was a nice touch as well, but this gave me one more trick up the sleeve.

I had an old 24 inch monitor tucked away behind my desk in my office. It’s nothing special, and hasn’t been used in well over a year or more. Inexpensive, Full HD, and handy meant it was the perfect candidate to serve as an additional monitor for my guests to see. I acquired an extra long HDMI 2.1 cable and had my laptops screen mirrored to this monitor that was placed outside of my booth area. Given the late timing of this addition, I just threw it into a spare piece of luggage and tucked it onto my Rock N Roller RS12 Stealth with everything else. While truly terrifying allowing everyone to see every single raw photo as I went, it also forced me to be much more precise and present with my work. Once the initial wariness faded, I found that the reception to this concept was just fantastic. I’d like to keep exploring this idea down the road, hopefully using a bigger screen that’s already at the venue. Unfortunately, I don’t see myself bringing this setup with my to shows that require flying.

@Nessa.in.nyc

Nessa took a break from DJing to come by the setup and take a bunch of photos. She was a delight to work with while absolutely crushing it!

Updated Process

This addition of tethering also drastically changed my workflow, resulting in a lot of time saved. This was fortunate, as this show was the busiest I have ever been at any other event. The Hawaii Tattoo Expo takes the title of most photos uploaded in a single day, being 588 for Saturday, the longest and biggest day of the show. The Big Dill Pickle Party took second place on Saturday with 522 uploaded, in just 7 hours versus 11. Sunday though? Sunday broke that record AGAIN taking number 2 spot at 531 uploaded to the main gallery in the same amount of time. I knew this show was going to be a fun time, but it blew my mind how many people showed up and with such a positive attitude. According to the events insta, they broke 10,500 guests this year for their biggest attendance yet. My body feels it without a doubt.

This influx of people meant that for the first time ever, I never had a moment to upload any photos throughout the show as I normally do. Even at much bigger events, I always have a lull where I can step away and batch out some pics as I go. Here? No, not an option for my pickle people. I had a line with no gaps from 10:59AM until roughly 4pm on Saturday. This gap was maybe 2-3 minutes before the line resumed nearly nonstop for the remainder of the day. Fortunately, my area closed at 6pm giving me several hours to review and edit everything once home. I was up until 1:30am Saturday night, and until nearly 3am on Sunday. I got them all done though, so there’s that!

Pickle Suits

I’ve not had quite an experience like the Pickle Party this weekend. These people are amazing and do not hold back

Conclusion

I had an exceptional time at the Big Dill Pickle Party this year, and I hope to return for every single year going forward. Not only were the guests incredibly kind, patient, and fun, but the management of the experience were all around professionals. I felt welcome, appreciated, and respected throughout the entire process from first contact to wrap up. Kevin, Chris, and Alexis were my main points of contact and were genuinely awesome to work with. I can’t recommend this event enough for volunteers/staff, but especially for the guests. While I was forewarned about the size of this party, the sheer scale of it was lost on me until I actually had to talk from one end to the other and took in just how much there was to do! I look forward to future pickle parties, and my future in Baltimore, Maryland.

Until Next Time

I’ll see you next time Big Dill Pickle Party! Thank you!