Storytelling with a great event photographer

After all the time and the energy you’ve spent planning your event, it’s important to make sure you hire a great event photographer to capture all those special moments that you worked so hard on creating. Anyone can come to your event and just start taking photographs on their iphone, but what you are left with doesn’t show your brand story or communicate your message. Random shots of people grouped together, smiling in front of the camera just doesn’t cut it.

Every company has a story that it needs to showcase to both their own people, to their clients and to the general population. It’s imperative to find a photographer who knows what’s important to document and can create a visually storyline that compliments the event so it can pushed out through various communication channels.

Here are some different type of events and how an events photographer might think about each event:

Award Show

If an important person is speaking, you’ll want to capture it, but you’ll also want to showcase the audience. Pick out the main action and get a lot of pictures. This could be create great content to use on your social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can post real-time behind-the-scenes photographs as it’s happening with customized hashtags. If people don’t know who is going to win, it’s a great opportunity for a photographer to highlight the drama, nervousness, and action of the evening.

Trade show

Show how hard your team works at a trade show. You can have the event photographer shoot the progression of the crew building the stage, booth, or tent. The average person doesn’t understand how much work is done behind the scenes, so this is a great opportunity to show them.

Get shots of all the gear being wheeled in, the entire crew having a big production meeting with all their headsets on, or even towers of scaffolding as they are built. Since it’s not something you see every day, it will spark a lot of interest and get people talking and sharing.

Lunch and Learns

This is a great way to show off your team of experts as they teach a crowd. Most of the time, these lectures are hard to shoot since it’s one man or woman standing in front of a whiteboard for an extended length of time, so brainstorm with your event photographer about how to get the most out of the shot and how you can make the photographs interesting. What can you shoot that is eye catching? What are some of the key moments? An experienced photographer should bring some ideas to the table.

Wrap Party

You don’t want to just want to document that the party happened, or that it was a lot of fun. This is a great opportunity to pick some important people – this can be some celebrities or just some interesting employees – and stick to them for a while to see how they mingle. Fun moments can be your story angle. Sometimes it’s not enough to tell a story in a frame or it can be entertaining to watch a progression of events unfolding throughout the evening.

Christmas Party

A Christmas party is a great time to celebrate and to capture all your hard work and achievements for the year. A photographer will want to ensure that all the lights, decorations, and festivities are captured on camera. Luckily, it’s easy to create a photographic narrative at end-of-the-year parties by showcasing what has happened at the company since January. Usually there are a lot of fun activities at these events such as Secret Santa, awards and other prizes. A good photographer will make sure that they capture the look on people's faces at the right moments when they open the presents. If there are kids at the party, sometimes Santa Claus is there making the rounds. The event photographer needs to be on their toes to ensure that they get everything and don't miss any excitement.

Charity Events

Charity events are amazing events to photograph since the story is already laid out. They are also usually well structure and well organized. The photographer will need to know what’s being planned and the program for the event. They should know who is speaking when and where so they can be in the right position. Often charity events are formal, so it's a good opportunity to capture people looking their best. Often times events at charity events there are themes such as ‘the roaring 20s’, Hollywood, or ‘James Bond,’ which can add a fun twist and add an extra element of storytelling.