There are many online articles offering tips to photographers on how to photograph a business conference. The authors of these articles usually give such wonderful photo advice as: bring a spare battery, carry an extra memory card, take pictures of the people speaking, etc.
For something completely different, may I humbly offer a few suggestions to conference organizers who plan on hiring a photographer to cover their event. Not only am I a photographer who has covered many conferences and conventions, both local, national and international, but I’m also someone who has helped organize a few small conferences.
Conference photography is of secondary importance compared to the conference itself and your attendees. But a few changes can make the photography better and more effective.
1) Hire a professional photographer. This should be obvious but after spending a lot of money on venue rental and catering, you may be tempted to shop for the cheapest photographer.
Do the math. Conference photography has high value. The pictures can be used in an annual report, a press release, on your social media and web site, to help market next year’s conference and for other collateral. What you might save by using a cheap photographer is minuscule in your overall conference budget. In fact, the savings might be equivalent to perhaps 20 servings of coffee break snacks. At your last conference, how much of those snacks got thrown out? Probably for that cost alone, you could’ve hired a better photographer.
2) Don’t be afraid to hire a photographer early in the planning stage instead of just three weeks before the event. If applicable, ask the photographer for advice about sight lines, lighting and staging.
3) Almost all hotel ballrooms, convention halls, arenas, auditoriums, etc., are dark especially when it comes to photography. This is because it’s cheaper for the venue to provide only a minimal amount of lighting. None of these places were designed with photography in mind.
Please add extra lighting to your event especially the stage area. Never rely solely on the venue’s existing light. Good lighting (and lots of it) is not just for the photographer but also for your audience. Good lighting will focus audience attention toward the stage. It will also give your event a more polished, professional appearance.
Good, white lighting not only adds a touch of excitement compared to yellowish tungsten lights, it also affects people’s mood and their ability to learn [see page 32]. If you’re really good, your conference lighting would subtly change colour through the day to influence audience behaviour.
How do you feel walking into a room lit with tungsten or fluorescent lights compared to a room with window light? Compare the mood of a room with only ceiling lights versus a room with table lamps. How do you feel on a sunny day compared to an overcast day?
4) Pictures of your audience are an important part of your conference photography. If you expect your photographer to take audience pictures, remember that it can’t be done if the audience is in total darkness. While there might be times when the audience area must be dark, don’t keep them in the dark when it isn’t necessary. Light also helps keeps people alert.
5) Depending on your situation, you may have to inform all conference delegates that a photographer is covering your event and that they might be photographed. Photographers don’t provide model releases from events because it’s impractical to do so.
6) Why are you putting plants on stage? Flowers might dress up the stage but large bushes and small trees get in the way and act as a visual distraction. Never put large plants around the lectern.
7) Don’t kid yourself by thinking that you can get away with renting a smaller room and then packing the tables and chairs closer together.
Photographers need space to walk around the room to get a variety of picture angles. In a tightly packed room, it can be impossible for a photographer to do anything more than stand at the back of the room. It’s also difficult for audience members trying to get to and from the washroom.
8) Use very small, black microphones. Anything else will distract and block the speaker’s lower face.
9) Don’t place the lectern in front of, or right next to, a window. It’s bad for both the pictures and the audience. For the photographer, the daylight coming through the window is usually too bright and too blue. For the audience, the outdoor scenery and whatever else is happening outside the window will be too distracting.
10) Most conferences hang a large screen on stage to display PowerPoint slides while the presenter gives their talk. The proper way to do this is to have the lectern very close and even slightly overlapping one of the bottom corners of the screen. There are a few reasons for this:
• The audience can see both the person talking and the on-screen information in one view. Audience members don’t have to constantly turn their heads left, right, left, right.
• It makes for a better presentation as it “connects” the speaker with the on-screen information.
• The photographer can include both the screen and the speaker in one tight photo which makes for a much better picture.
11) You may need to provide on-stage presenters with a floor monitor which mirrors the on-stage screen behind them. This will hopefully stop the person from constantly turning around to look at the screen behind them. This is better for the presentation, the audience and the photographer.
12) When a conference uses a projection screen or electronic display in a dark room, it’s impossible to get a good photo exposure for both the screen and the person speaking. If the screen looks good, the person will be too dark. If the person looks good, the on-screen information will be washed out.
You can avoid this by keeping a spotlight on the person speaking. (Smart presenters will use dark backgrounds in their PowerPoint slides. Not only is this good for photographers, it’s also better for the audience sitting in the dark room.)
13) Having black curtains behind the on-stage people is not a good idea unless your stage lighting is amazingly well done. Otherwise, people with dark clothes or dark hair will blend into the black background. Remember that people on stage need to be lit from several different angles and not just from the front or top.
14) A venue-supplied lectern will often bear the name and logo of the venue. But do you really want “Mapleview Wedding, Banquet and Meeting Centre” in your conference pictures? Instead, put your conference name and logo on the front of the lectern. Be sure it’s big enough to look good from a distance and that it’s positioned high enough on the lectern so it will show in the pictures.
15) If your event will have an on-stage panel discussion, please don’t hide the people behind a big table. But if you do use a table, cover it with a tablecloth that has a white top surface (this will brighten faces). Also, use small bottles or glasses of water for the guests, not those big, two-litre hotel pitchers. And again, small, black microphones.
Move your panel of people closer to the front of the stage and have each person seated close together. If they sit too far apart, it makes for lousy pictures. It will be almost impossible to get the entire panel in one shot unless that picture is very wide which makes for a bad photo. Notice in TV interviews that the interviewer and the subject(s) often sit with their legs almost touching each other.
Having on-stage people sit on a big sofa or in comfy lounge chairs may look cool but each person will sink into the soft seat and they will slouch badly. Never a professional look.
16) Placing event signage on stage can be a good thing if it’s done right. A large, well-designed background often looks better than the old-fashioned “pipe and drape” background.
17) If sponsors will have product displays or booths at your event, tell them ahead of time that you will have a photographer taking pictures of their people and their display. I’ve been at events where sponsor representatives refused photography since they didn’t have clearance from their head office. To be fair, some exhibitors may be concerned that their products have to be photographed in a certain way to meet government regulations or corporate standards.
18) Why do you need pictures of the food and the table decorations? Everyone knows what coffee cups, plates of muffins and fruit salad looks like. Lunch buffets are rarely photogenic. Flower centerpieces haven’t changed much in the past century. Pictures of the food and room decorations might help set a mood but . . .
Conferences are not about the food (unless it’s a food conference) but rather they’re about the people. The emphasis should be on photographing what the conference attendees are doing: talking with each other, comparing notes, studying conference information, handling new products, having fun, etc. People pictures are always more effective than photos of food and table settings. People sell people.
19) A conference organizer will often give the photographer a list of pictures they want shot. This might be necessary if you’re dealing with an inexperienced photographer. But if you use a photographer who has newspaper experience then this photographer already knows how to properly cover your event. Really.
A news photographer has covered many political conventions, business conferences, corporate AGMs and big consumer shows. This photographer knows to produce well-rounded coverage of the event, to shoot wide and to shoot tight, to do closeups and also overalls, to recognize and follow important people, to produce pictures that tell stories, to turn a static object like an event sign into a people picture. They know that people sell people because that’s the underlying basis of journalism.
Yes, sometimes a shot list might be necessary but don’t get too locked-in or too long. Otherwise the photographer might miss a lot of the conference because they’re too busy fulfilling your shopping list of pictures.
If you’re really smart and want great pictures from your next conference or convention, hire a photographer (or two) with a journalism background and simply tell them, “Go make some interesting pictures for us.”
