The Shot List

Certain events only happen once; a wedding, a conference, a trade show, a concert, a rodeo, an incentive cruise. The event planning team, in certain cases, will work on an event for several months, even years. Venue selection, speaker vetting, risk assessments, travel arrangements, room setups, event design, staff hiring, menu selections; the task list for any given event can be many, many, many pages long. The planning team can consist of a few people or a few hundred people; include just a core group or multiple different departments and stakeholders. I’m probably not telling you something you don’t already know.

My hope for those working with conferences or larger-scaled events is that you partner with a team of people who are on-site capturing images, moments, and soundbites for social media or future marketing. You should have a dedicated group of people, volunteer or paid, whose responsibility is to take photos and videos of keynote and breakout speakers and sessions, attendees interacting with each other, discussions during workshops, conversations on the trade show floor, activities during setup, and all sorts of b-roll. On that team, it needs to be someone’s job to sift through the day’s images, match them with jaw-dropping, tear-jerking, and attention-getting quotes, and ensure everyone at, and wishing-they-were-at, the event gets a taste of what transpired that day. Image and brand management happen here.

In my blog “Say Cheese” I mentioned being sure to take pictures for a variety of reasons, not just social media posting, but also historical documentation, team-building, and future event planning. This goes for weddings and smaller celebrations as well. How do you know that the appropriate images are being captured? How do you know your wedding photographer got the right combination of family members in photos together? This group of people will only be together for this event once. These days there are so many different family dynamics and designs that a photographer would also need to be a therapist to figure out how family members are related to each other. You want the right grandparents with the right next generation, and don’t make the photographer find out the hard way that the Hatfields and the McCoys are distant relatives of your client. A seasoned event planner knows better than to leave anything to chance. Give the photographer a shot list and a little family history and not only will things move more efficiently, the family will have pictures they can cherish forever.

As the one responsible for ensuring the stakeholders who hired you are satisfied with the execution and outcome of their events, it is not unreasonable to provide those posting on social media or taking wedding pictures for the family, a list of images you expect them to capture. Be specific. List any speakers, their sessions, and which room they are in. Make a list of family members or even provide a brief family tree (like an org chart). Schedule an appointment to review the information with the photographer and their team, answer any questions they may have, and ask if they have any shots to add to the list. Sharing what you know and learning from others is how the best lists of any kind get curated.

Have you worked with an on-site photography team? What one thing did you learn?
Share it here or send me an email, I’d love to hear about your experience.

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Schedule a consultation with Tracy at tracybaer.com!