Hughes blog post: A checklist for great event photos

The need to get good, quality photographs for your event is more important today than it ever was before.

I’ve heard that 2.5 billion photos are uploaded each month to Facebook, which is huge. There’s a good reason for that – people love to look through photos of their friends, family, and from brands they enjoy engaging with.

Good social photographs enhance event coverage
Good social photographs enhance event coverage

But more often than not, photos come back from a function or event that aren’t used to their full potential because they don’t have some of the basics.

Here’s a checklist I put together for a photographer for a recent event. You can’t always get a professional photographer, but if you have someone that’s comfortable behind a camera, brief them with these tips.

1. Take the names of each person in each photo, so that this can be provided as a caption. If possible, also include the company / organisation the person is from. For example: Photo 1: John Doe and Joe Bloggs from Hughes Public Relations with Jane Doe and Joanne Bloggs from Client Company; Photo 2: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison from the Winning Football Club. Yes, this takes a little longer. But it is infinitely easier when it comes to using the photos afterwards. I’ve seen many emails go flying around after the event trying to identify all of the people in the photographs.
2. If you can, ensure the sponsor’s signage is prominently displayed behind / alongside the people in the photo. (They paid their money to support the event… give them a little love in return!)
3. Please ensure sure no one is holding alcohol (or any drinks at all) in their hands when the photo is taken. (Unless you are taking photographs at an event where a beverage company is a sponsor or the event is about the beverage company, lose the drinks in hands. It just looks better).
4. If possible, ask people to remove sunglasses for the photograph. (Again, smiling happy faces always look much better when you can see people’s eyes).
5. As a general rule, when taking photos of people in social situations, have two, three or four people – any more than four and it will get too crowded (and confusing when you’re writing all the names down)!
6. Get the basics right. Make sure everyone is facing the camera, opening their eyes, and you don’t have too many harsh shadows or fingers in front of the lens. Use a flash in low light conditions to prevent blur.
7. Supply the photos to media as soon as possible after the event to ensure the content is timely.

Once you have your clear, sunglass and alcohol free, captioned photos, after the event your PR company can send the photos to media outlets that accept supplied photographs. You can post the photos to Facebook, so that “fans” of the brand and event could look through them. They could also be used to post to Flickr, for newsletters, for websites, for email newsletters, for Twitter… the list goes on.

- Kate Potter