"They look the same after a while..."

It’s one thing to archive a keynote through a handful of photos.

It’s quite another to capture a variety of moments that supports your marketing efforts.

When I see another photographer covering the same event, I always make the effort to go by and introduce myself. 

I let them know that I will do my best to stay out of their way :) 

During a recent keynote, I befriended a photographer who was covering the entire 3-day conference, and we got to talking after the general session was over. 

I asked him how it was going and how many photos he’s already shot. 

When he gave me the number, it sounded extremely low considering the amount of hours he’s already put in, so I asked him about that. 

His response was that he told the client that, after a while, the photos captured on stage all start to look the same, so there’s no point in continuing to shoot once he captured a handful of keepers. 

Interesting. 

I simply nodded my head and didn’t say a word as I was about to head out the door to a grab a cab to the airport.

But, if I had the chance to stick around and engage in this conversation, I would have some thoughts to share regarding this topic.

I guess I’ll just have to share them now with you :)

First of all, when it comes to capturing speakers presenting on stage, there is an opportunity to capture compelling, insightful, inspiring, humorous and reflective imagery from the moment they step on the platform to the moment they exit. 

And they all feel a little bit different.

Their stories take a variety of twists and turns, which produces a range of facial expression and body language changes from moment-to-moment. This affords the photographer a chance to capture a wide variety of photos based on this fact alone. 

But wait, there’s more…

Aside from their presentation style, the photographer also needs to factor in how to capture:

• The room in wide, medium and close-up photos 180 degrees around the stage

• Stage elements, including slides and IMAG screens

• Audience participation

• The speaker’s signature bits  

• The speaker walking into the crowd

• Behind-the-scenes moments 

And, all of these variables in the room are evolving and changing second-by-second, which creates a slew of opportunities to build more uniqueness into the image asset portfolio captured up until that moment.

Long story short, the photos won’t look the same after a while…

…If you understand the variables that are necessary to capture. 

Now, If you simply want a photographer to capture a shot here or there to archive the event, sure, a handful of shots will do the job. 

But, if you want them to create a comprehensive portfolio of images that you can hand off to your design team to jazz up with graphics, text and/or branding elements to be used by your social media folks, website designer, biz dev specialist, and other people on your team charged with growing your business, then you need to give them more options than that. 

Of course you’re never going to use all these photos, that’s not the goal.

But more variety in your image portfolio puts your team in a position to create better marketing materials on your behalf. 

Keep this in mind the next time you hire a photographer for one of your talks. Make sure they’re on the same page with you regarding capturing as much visual variety as possible from beginning to end. 

Your marketing team will thank you for it :) 

For more information on visual storytelling strategies for experts who speak, write books, facilitate, run workshops and consult, I invite you to sign up for my blog. That’s where I share the goodies - check it out for yourself :)