7 tips for shooting meetings

I like making meetings, many people get together to work, there are interesting speakers, and everything has a schedule-even drinking coffee. As long as you make adequate preparations in advance, there will be no accidents here and there will be no pressure to shoot. All the rules of photography apply to shooting meetings. You must already know something about it. Here I want to introduce some useful skills.

1. Determine the work

If you shoot a meeting as a professional photographer, you should sign an agreement with the client to determine the submission method and copyright ownership of the picture, and clarify your responsibilities as a photographer.

Generally speaking, the copyright of conference photos is different from other works, because organizers often need to make these photos public, otherwise the photos will be worthless.

Similarly, it is best not to include printing fees in the quotation. They almost never need to print photos. So don't forget to add the price of DVD to the quotation.

Don't expect customers to read your ready-made agreement carefully. Even if it is stipulated in the agreement, you should discuss with the customer whether you are allowed to publish these photos on your website. Sometimes customers don't care about this kind of thing-they may also promote it as a free activity. But sometimes they may want to restrict the use of photos, so be sure to confirm this with customers.

Finally, I am ready to answer the photographer's question: "Where can I see these photos? Do you have a business card? " If you clarify to the customer, you can answer any questions.

2. Bring a large aperture lens.

In the meeting place, nothing is certain except the bad lighting. I don't want to disappoint those who use ordinary digital cameras, but if you want to get high-quality photos, please use SLR cameras with ISO 1600 and 85mm f/ 1.8 lenses. You can shoot with two lenses: 1, 18-()mm f/2.8 for shooting scenes and taking photos, and the others are 85 mm. There are more expensive combinations: Quan Huafu SLR camera with ISO 3200 sensitivity, 1 70-200mm lens, 1 large aperture wide-angle lens.

Bring a flash, but you don't need it most of the time. The ceiling is too high, and the direct effect of the flash is too poor, which easily affects the speaker and the audience.

I don't need a backpack now. I use a 1 or 2-belt carrying system, which can hold batteries, memory cards, business cards and 1 lenses.

When taking a group photo, a tripod is very useful, but it is not necessary. A monopod is also acceptable. You can leave some equipment in the car and go into battle lightly, because too much equipment will become a burden after working for a long time.

Understand the timetable

Once I make an appointment for the conference shooting project, I will immediately add the relevant websites to my browser favorites. The night before, I will check the changes in my schedule and make preparations accordingly. How many groups do they have There are several key points. Duration? Balance between battery and memory card? I will assign at least 50 photos to each group and key points. How about parking? How long will it take me to get on the road? If the parking lot is close to the scene, I will leave some equipment such as tripod in the car and walk there for 5 minutes. Parking lots with special parking services can't do this.

Arrive at the meeting in advance and get the timetable. If you know the schedule in advance and bring a watch, the shooting process will be very easy. You don't have to stay at the meeting all the time, but don't miss the key part and be sure to appear in the Q&A session in time.

Read the report of the meeting and pay special attention to the photos of the speakers. You certainly don't want to miss the photo of the CEO meeting VIP because you don't know them. Similarly, it is useful to know the contents of the meeting.

4. Don't disturb others

This is a contradiction: the conference organizer wants you to take pictures of great speakers, but he doesn't want you to block the audience's view or keep shooting continuously.

Some people will move themselves when they talk to cooperate with your shooting. Unfortunately, such people are rare. Most people who speak have strange expressions on their faces, or walk so fast that every photo will be blurred. To make matters worse, some people only look down at the manuscript and look up at the audience and the camera for less than a second.

My method is not high-speed continuous shooting, but I can still take good photos. The secret is to wait for the right time by intuition, take a photo, and then take the next one after playback. If you shoot every 10- 15s, people won't feel disturbed.

Speaking of interrupting, never stand in front of the audience or the camera.

Remember, you are not going to capture good memories, but to provide services and photo services. Organizers and audiences paid for the lecture. They pay you to take good photos, but they also hope you'd better not be too conspicuous at the scene.

The good news is that you don't have to worry. Each speaker usually has 15-30 minutes, so you have plenty of time to shoot.

Change the shooting angle

The speakers can't run, but you can choose many different shooting angles to take good photos.

Sitting on the floor in front of the podium, sitting in the first row of the audience, shooting from behind several viewers, shooting more viewers with a wide-angle lens, shooting from the side, and so on.

Remember, you are shooting marketing materials, don't think like a photographer, think like a designer. How are you going to add this person's photo to next year's website or conference report? Take a full-length photo from the front, side and even back. Take panoramic photos, portrait photos, close-up photos, and distant photos. If possible, take the conference LOGO into the photo, or use the content-related screen content as the background. Don't miss any possible angle.

Try to make every photo look rich. No one wants to see pictures of only chairs.

6. photos that must be taken

At the end of the day, you want to return home with a full load. But just a bunch of photos of speakers from different angles is not enough.

Be sure to communicate with customers before the meeting. If they only want a photo of the VIP spokesperson, leave the rest alone and keep the shutter.

Suppose the customer wants more, you have to do more. Your photo story should start at the registration desk: the audience is collecting schedules and famous brands; The audience is reading out the meeting schedule; The first speaker took the stage; Audience-all good photos.

Speaking of question-and-answer sessions, remember to applaud the audience and the spokesman who answered the questions. During the break, take photos of people getting together. Shoot with your 85 mm lens without attracting attention. In the group discussion session, take photos of each group member and the scene during the discussion. Is there any interesting equipment on site? Or is someone taking notes? Is there a VIP sitting in the audience? Try to capture everything that attracts your attention in this conference room.

Also pay attention to the off-site: anything to record? Have you photographed the bulletin board put in the lobby by the organizer? At lunch time, don't shoot people who eat, you can shoot more food.

At other times of the day, keep the same attention, but try to discover new things.

Finally, it is likely to take a group photo for the participants or an organization. Sometimes customers may not be interested in this link, or forget it. I will try to remind them that this photo is a good souvenir, but I won't force them, because there are often more important things in their hearts than photos.

Deal with it quickly

Remember, what you have to do is marketing materials, which will soon be out of date, so you must act quickly-try to finish them within 48 hours. These people are not newlyweds at the wedding. I can't wait to post these photos on the website right away, right away! Pick out some photos and delete the bad ones in the camera, which will improve the speed of post-processing

Forget black and white photos, HDR, too many colors and any other artistic effects. What you want to create is not art, but market material.

As for the classification of photos, newlyweds may like to look for photos with their figures on DVD, but the marketing representative of the company will never. I think the better way is to select 300 photos (8-hour meeting) to make a collection, then make the one with the best 125 photos, and then make the best 75 photos. Each photo offers three resolutions: high, medium and low.

As a service person, the threshold for entering conference photography is not low, because since last year, every company is more willing to hire this photographer. But this is not always the case.

According to my experience-I once organized a meeting, I can give you a bad example. I set up a website related to the conference, but I lost my photo CD. So I asked the photographer if I could get one. As a result, it took him 1 week to reply to me, and he charged 125 dollars. Guess what the result is? He earned 125 dollars, but he was never employed again.