Before and During Event

Although we have extensive documentation, here are the top things to do for every job:

  • Contact the onsite contact the day before to introduce yourself. If you’re running late for some reason, be sure to let the client know.
  • Always arrive at least 15 minutes early before your appointment start time. Arriving right at the start time doesn’t give yourself enough time to get situated and the client will be more at ease when you arrive early
  • Do not make promises on faster turnarounds/social media selects when requested by your onsite contact. Kindly ask them relay that request to the producer and we will update you – you can let them know if you think it will be possible if you know you have time but don’t confirm anything as we may have other things required for the job.
  • Don’t bring an assistant/second shooter without clearing it with your producer/client. 
  • Don’t share images/details on social media.

In general, we are looking for 35-50 edited images per hour of coverage. 

Candid/Environmental Shots

Here are the top key things to consider for these types of shoots:

  • Use a combination of prime lens and medium zoom for a variety of shots. Use flash as necessary but not exclusively.
  • Shoot in your camera’s raw format and ideally with 2 card slots (saving jpg in 2nd slot)
  • Keep profile shots to a minimum. Angle yourself so that there are clear face-on expressions. 
  • When shooting with flash make sure you use the flash to light your subjects but to also bring in the environment and capturing the ambient lighting/decor by leveraging ISO and shutter speed as well.
  • Keep environmental shoots to about 10% of images (unless you’re explicitly requested otherwise) and don’t take photos of wait staff/bartenders/etc (unless they really stand out or are action shots)

Keynote/Speech/Presenter Shots

Here are the top tips for stage/presentation shoots:

  • In general, at least 5-10 great shots of key speaker from multiple different angles (more if they are on stage for 20 minutes or more). Always try and get shots of the speaker with background branding/logos/slides in context. 
  • Also get crowd shots, a combination of wide shots as well as shots with prime lens with people looking engaged.
  • For panel discussions, wide shots of entire panel as well as zoom-in shots of each person on panel from multiple angles. 
  • For award ceremony shots, get at least TWO images of each winner. Connect with client to determine subjects are ‘stopping’ on stage for the photo. Sometimes, they plan for it, other times it is more candid.
  • Refer to this complete galleries to see the quality from an entire event: Conference, Evening Reception

Post-Production Guidelines

Here are the top expectations for your editing process. The more mindful you are while shooting at the event, the less time you have to spend in post. 

  • Recommend a two round approach to efficiently produce desire results of 35-50 edited images per hour of coverage. First round, to cull images to find usable images. Second round, to clean up images and make Best Of selections. In 2nd round, if you’re not within the number of edited images goal, then here is where you remove questionable photos or add more to get to the goal.
  • It is important to use cropping to clearly promote what is the main focus on an image. Cropping remove distractions and make okay image better. Only use 2×3 aspect ratio when cropping. Color correction should be done in batch (using sync setting in LR).
  • Rate the best of images as 4 stars and they should represent about 15-20% of the edited images. Since many images are used for social media applications, the best images saves a lot of time for clients.