I do a lot of event photography. However its rare that I’m the only photographer there, so I often get to compare results and how they promote/distribute their photos. I’ve seen great event photographers, and some bad ones that I won’t link to. Here’s a few things that I make sure to take into account, and how people screw it up.
Post Your Photos While They are Hot!
After you photograph an event, I realize that the last thing you want to do is stress over getting them online. You’re possibly doing it for free/cheap and the drinks you had at the open bar don’t make you feel like doing it right now. Still, focus and get them up quick. The difference between getting them online that night and 72 hours later is huge. Do it now, not later.
Creative Commons License your Photos
Some people will disagree with this (mainly 100% fulltime professional photogs), but I think its best to put your photos out under a Creative Commons License. This enables people to use them for their own personal use (think blogs, twitter profile photos, facebook, myspace, youtube, etc) legally. You can set if someone can make derrivatives (I always allow it) and if they can use it for commercial use (I generally don’t, but I’m generous in allowing most companies do it anyway. Just don’t want Time Magazine using my photo for free on the front page).
Holding the copyright and rights close to your chest rarely does you any favors that I’ve seen. Seriously, who is going to pay you after the fact for the license to a photo? Few. I’d rather have the exposure than the rights.
Make People Look Good!
I take a lot of photos at an event. Generally 50-100/hr if not more. I wish I could be more deliberate and make every shot count, but especially in group photos when people are drinking its often hard to get everyone with their eyes open and looking good.
Don’t publish photos of people with their mouth awkwardly held, lookng trashed or with their eyes closed. This is why I won’t use something to auto-publish all of the photos I take (like an EyeFi card, which is awesome technology). The last thing people want is bad photos of them out there. And on that note…
Touchups are Appreciated
I’m not one to try to make people look better than they are, but I want photos that look as good as possible too and that people want to share with others. If someone has a piece of food on their face, spilled a drink on themselves, has a cold sore, or a huge zit on their head then please Photoshop that shit out of there. Don’t try to get into the game of trying to make everyone look like 100lb model or airbrushing everyone to perfection. Just cut out stuff that really isn’t “them”.
If you do have some exceptional photos of really good looking people, then on occasion I’ll go through and do a tad bit more detail work. But it’s mainly for exposure and color correction. Bring out people’s eyes, lips and other favorable details color-wise and you will have a really cool photo.
Don’t Kill People with Flash!
You often must use flash in many situations. Events are generally in dark bars, ballrooms and event halls. Even shooting at ISO1600 (the best my camera can do before stuff starts looking like trash) with an aperture of f/1.8 or f/2.0, these rooms are dark, hard to focus, meter, etc. Flash is sadly needed.
But don’t overdo it! Create a small deflected pop to fill the room a bit, and don’t blast them with it. Don’t be afraid to ask people to turn or move into an area that has slightly better ambient lighting. Use any diffusers that you can to spread out the light. The last thing you want to do is make everyone look like a ghost or shiny because of the flash.
Way too many event photographers rely on just carrying a huge flash and using it for every photo. On my D200, I have my function button set to disable flash when I hold it. Get flash and non-flash photos when possible. Memory is cheap.
If you can afford it, go for better lenses and higher (but high quality) ISO over more flash. The new lines of Nikon and Canons each go to ISO25600 and look pretty damn good up there still! The ISO6400 on those looks amazing. Get a lens with an aperture that opens to f/2.8 or better and you probably don’t need flash for anything except to bring focus to a specific element.
Tag and Title things Properly
Do not under any circumstance just throw all of the photos online without proper titles and tags. Sure, at first in getting them up there they might start with just the name of the event as the title, but it doesn’t need to stay that way. Tag things liberally (with people’s names), put their names in the titles, and then also put links to their Twitter accounts and websites in the description.
Then, add all of the photos to the appropriate photo pools and groups. People will really appreciate you doing this properly.
I’ve found it best to title things like this for a photo with 3 people (2 of which that you don’t know) “?, ?, and Jon Smith at Event Name”. Then crowdsource the titling to Twitter or elsewhere and get people to leave comments, notes and tags with the people’s names. This gets the job done quickly.
Proper exposure, cropping and rotation is manditory
There is literally zero excuse for publishing poorly exposed photos, with horrid cropping and the rotation being off. Just don’t do it. While you’re at it, make some judgement calls about the contrast and color balance. You almost always need to tweak your White Balance a bit too. I find that I’m always adding just a bit of contrast, then kicking up the exposure, increasing saturation a bit, and then perhaps bringing down the highlights just a tad. Photos will look richer, more alive and more vibrant. People will look better, which is what they want.
Don’t be a Douche
I’ve seen some event photographers to be complete assholes at events. There was one photographer for a major publication at ROFLCon 2008 at MIT. She was being a complete queen about her work, pushing others out of the way and being really annoying. On top of that, she had a huge belt mounted battery pack for her yet larger flash that she was carrying around. I mentioned to her at one point that all her photos were going to look washed out. She ignored me and snubbed me. Then later I asked when her photos would be online so I could see them, she turned and said in the most condecending voice, “My photos are exclusive through July!” then turned and walked away.
In the meantime, I was posting my photos hourly during the event and anyone who gave a rat’s ass about them saw them months before the article came out in this publication. Oh, and sure enough, her photos looked completely flash-washed out and boring. Full of fail.
Work with other photographers, share equipment if you can, and be nice to people around you. You aren’t the star of the event, no matter what publication you are with.
You followed me on Twitter. Maybe you followed me because you thought what I was saying was interesting. For many they follow people seemingly in order to get a reciprocal follow back. Yet, for some reason I didn’t follow back. A few days later I get an email in my box from Qwitter that you unfollowed me on Twitter, and that’s ok. Why did I not follow you back?
Let’s take a look at the reasons that I didn’t follow you back and think about them a bit:
- You fell through the cracks- I hate to say it, but Twitter and my social media network aren’t my highest priorities in life at the moment. They are up there, but if push comes to shove then sometimes you get lost in the shuffle and for this I apologize. If you unfollow me, I’ll likely notice and follow you back then if you fell into this category and we can work to make things right. I’m trying to make this one happen less and less.
- You don’t Tweet in English- I think it’s wonderful that the Internet is filled with people that speak various languages, but unfortunately I only speak English and can grok a bit of Latin at best. If you’re Tweeting in another language that’s really cool, but I’m not going to follow what I can’t read at all. Maybe someday I’ll learn, but thank you for the follow. I assume you’re better than me and can read multiple languages or you wouldn’t have done so.
- You are clearly a spammer- Twitter has gotten better at catching these, but if you’re a spammer (either automated or just a person that’s an obvious spammer/company) but I don’t follow back people that are just trying to sell their book, diet or new type of kitty litter.
- Your follow ratios are fucked- These come in two categories. First; I have literally been followed by people following 30,000+ other people, and with 4000 people following them. There is literally no way that a human can parse that much information, or actually care about what I have to say. I will never follow these people back and they are generally also spammers, or soon to be spammers. No thanks. Then there’s the people who just make some bad choices on Twitter. Try to keep your ratio at no worse than 1:1. 0.9:1 is better, as it shows that you aren’t following every spam-bot back yourself and that you likely actually listen to the conversation as it happens. I see a lot of people that are following 400, but only have 40 in return or worse. That’s a 10:1 ratio and uncool. I could expound on this for a while, but basically if you’re following way too many, then I’m not following you back likely. There are occasional exceptions, but that’s the general rule. Your ratios can be a tad off if you’re still in the sub 100 following/followers area. Everyone gets room to learn.
- You don’t Tweet enough- These happen to sometimes be people with screwed up ratios, and it totally confuses me. I generally assume they are about to turn into spammers. I got followed today by someone that was following 1,300 people and followed by 100. She had tweeted 4 times. Why in the world would you follow 1,300 people but only tweet 4 times?!?! I’m almost never one to complain about over-tweeting and I’d much rather see a person with active and healthy conversations than someone with none.
- And finally: You aren’t interesting- Ouch. I know that hurts doesn’t it? These are rare, but sometimes if someone is borderline on all of the above things then this really becomes the make or break factor. Actually it can break all of the others pretty easily. If you never @reply, and don’t say at least one thing that makes me think, “That’s something interesting” in your first front page on Twitter then I generally don’t follow you back. Most people luckily are actually interesting.
On the bright side, there’s some people I try to always follow back:
- People at an event: Unless you are terribly boring, blatently whoring out a product, or something else then if you were at an event I attended I will likely follow you back no matter what. I tried to follow back every single person from Podcamp Pittsburgh (#PCPBG3) regardless of ratios and stuff because they were all cool people and many were still learning about Twitter.
- People from Boston: Again, unless you terribly violate some of the above then if you are from Boston or nearby I will likely follow you back. I figure there’s a good chance of running into you and it’s pretty embarrassing to have not followed back someone. Plus, we already have something in common and likely know many of the same people
- You are friend with my friends: If you’re talking a lot with my friends in your first page on Twitter then I’ll likely follow you back. My friends/network can vet people for me.
- We’ve had a conversation: If you’ve @replied me for something I’ve said, then I’ll likely follow you back. Ditto if you commented on a photo of mine on Flickr or something. Conversation makes me think that I’ll have more of it in the future, which is what I want.
Growing your network is hard and you have to make a lot of decisions along the way. It sometimes conflicts with the fact that you want to keep your signal to noise ratios solid, but at the same time increase your voice and reach. Everyone’s got their own guidelines and methods of doing things. These aren’t the “right” wants, but just my ways of doing it.
How do you determine who to follow and who to ignore and risk having unfollow you?
Last night marked the opening of Boston’s Apple store on Bolyston street; the largest in the US. From what I saw on Twitter, crowds started early in the day. The building is across from the Prudential Mall and is situated between a Fidelity Bank branch and a Copy-Cop. Taking form of many of the other mega-Apple stores the exterior is of thick glass with a prominent eight foot tall Apple logo displayed on the third floor. Curiously however, is the fact that some of the other surrounding buildings also use similar glass motifs including the Fidelity’s entrance and across the street in the new hotel and condos on the top floors. I do wonder if this was intentional or simply a common design element of this decade that I am just noticing.
I arrived around 5:15pm, with the store slated to open at 6:00. Apple had very carefully planned for the crowds and had police presence helping with metal barricades similar to what they use for the Boston Marathon. These formed block long, and 15 feet wide boxes that resembled lines. These lines extended all the way down to Commonwealth Avenue and were completely full. They opened the store a few minutes early I think in order to try and shorten the lines. Apple employees from all over were there to help out in bright, colorful Apple shirts. The lines moved swiftly. That being said, I didn’t get to the front of the line until about 6:40pm.
I spoke with several people about Apple and technology in general, their thoughts on an impending and much hyped 3G iPhone and other geeky topics. At one point many of the Apple employees ran by the line giving everyone a high-five, yelling a bit cheerfully and getting everyone hyped up. There were no problems in the line and everything went smoothly. Right before I got inside I met up with my friend Selina, but she wasn’t in line so she waited for me to get out.
Upon entrance to the store you were greeted by dozens of Apple employees handing out t-shirts in these awesome little origami like boxes. As far as I saw, there were no special sales and most people weren’t buying anything much. A few Redsox players showed up at one point, and rumors about Joey from Aerosmith being there at one point were around. No Steve Jobs, but that is to be expected.
The store is pretty cool itself, but like all of the mega Apple stores it’s really just ‘more of the same’ as the smaller stores. They don’t have special products that they only sell at the larger stores, or any displays that aren’t on display at others. It’s just ‘more’. One massive highlight of the store that’s hard to explain I find, is how awesome the stairwell is. I think it’s far cooler than the stairwell and elevator of the NYC store. The fact that there’s such a great view from the windows also is pretty killer over the 5th avenue store. It feels a bit like a 3-floor version of the Soho store.
I only spent a few minutes in the store. I actually wanted to buy a screen protection film for my iPhone, but I was pressed to get back outside and make my way to POPSignal.
POPSignal was great. I met up with my friend Rich Helle and walked over to Tequila Rain. As always at these events there were great people, great conversation and much card swapping on everyone’s parts. I ran into Aaron White and pulled him back on with the super-secret project that I’ve got going on (which will be revealed shortly as soon as we have a name!) and got to talk with Mark Modzelewski who I hadn’t seen in a while. I also got a bit of time to hang out with social-media superstar Chris Brogan while on my way out. One of the unexpected twists of the evening ended with seeing Chris jokingly running away from us all the way down Landsdowne Street. Afterwards we went to Eastern Standard for a few more drinks and then settled up for the night. Overall, a great time.
This weekend I’ve got to stop by Barcamp for at least a little bit. I’m not going to be able to do the entire thing since I have some other stuff going on too, but I’ll at least make an appearance.
