Picking and using business event photographs
When a business events photographer is has done his assignment s/he normally delivers considerable quantities of images. These are usually on a flash disk or a compact disc. This high number of similarly-looking photographs can overwhelm the organiser or the end user in the organiser-firm such as a marketing officer/ manager or public relations manager.
Following the completions of the assignment a photographer goes though all his or her shots to weed out poor images such as those which are blurry or hazy before editing the remainder to ensure that they conform to the principal’s brief and requirements. Once satisfied, s/he delivers the order to the customer who has the task of selecting images according to intended uses both in the organisation and outside.
Selection criteria
There are a number of criteria which are used to select images from a photographer’s delivery for immediate or future use. Sometimes criteria are determined by intended use which results in criteria and use operating inseparably together. The following are the main criteria and purposes:
Quality
The main criterion for selecting images is quality. This determines the usability of photographs. Poor images cannot be used without damaging the depicted or associated brand. For this reason it is important for the handler of the images to go through them and select those whose quality is high. Image quality is determined in terms of visual appearance and size. In terms of quality usable images should be of high quality in their appearance.
This means no blurs, haziness or obscurity of key objects. For example, an image which shows the brand logo, guest speaker and exhibition stand staff obscured by other people or some other object cannot be used unless these were obscured by some very important visitor or activity whose presence overrides other considerations. If, for example, the guest of honour at an exhibition passes by an exhibitor’s stand the development becomes news-making and raises that business organisation’s profile on the market. Such an image can be used for during-the-event marketing initiatives such as social media posts targeting those who could not make it to the show.
It, however, does not mean that all images with haziness and blurriness are bad. Sometimes photographers use hazy and blurry background as means of emphasising, foregrounding and focusing on a subject such as the guest of honour or a trophy won by an exhibitor at a show awards event. This means that haziness, haziness and other seemingly negative aspects have their uses depending on the photographer’s brief. This all depends on the use to which the event organiser wishes to put them to.
Pixel perfect
The quality of event images can also be determined in terms of their resolution. This refers to the size of the image in terms of its length and width in pixels. The higher the pixels the better the quality and usability. Images are used in different applications and each demands its own size. For example, an image used to illustrate a marketing message on a billboard requires a very high resolution which runs in order of thousands of pixels compared to an image used to illustrate a story in an A4sized print magazine. The higher the resolution the better as forcing low resolution images on a big application results in pixilation which affects the quality of the resultant message or image which damages the depicted or associated brand on the market. Pixilation refers to the situation where an image becomes blurry and grainy because of stretching it to cover an area which is way bigger than its natural size during the designing stage of application such as billboards, packaging and pamphlets among a host of others.
Purpose
Images can also be selected on the basis of the intended purpose. If photographs are meant for use in print media stories through media statements and releases, the orientation of images featuring people is usually portrait which enables media houses to crop them to fit various spaces whose width is determined by publication columns.
In the case of a brief one of whose requirement was driven by foregrounding a new fast moving consumer brand (FMCBs) being introduced to the market at a show, high resolution close up shots of the packaged brand are preferred as opposed to distant ones. This is because a close up shot enables an exhibitor to create a situation where viewers such as a social media users and the brand stare at each other eyeball to eyeball enabling the target to absorb its details such as the brand name, logo and colours among others. It enables the viewer to register the brand in his or her mind.
Humanness
When handling business event images, it is easy to dismiss all pictures which do not feature people and objects which were not part of the brief’s shot list such as guests of honour, event branded background walls, trophies and medals among other items which are considered pertinent to the event at hand.
It should be remembered an event does not only consists in what is deemed important. Even a swallow which accidentally flies into an event venue causing brief commotion can provide that brief moment of mirth which demonstrates that even business events are human undertakings after all. Shots of delegates listening to a conference speaker or applauding a particular point he has made, visitors taking selfies near a brand mascot at a show or farmer leaping into the air in joy as he moves to receive a prize at a cattle show may considered peripheral to the main event but the bring out the humanness of the event brand. Such images which bring out the human interest side of business events are suitable for use in social media posts to depict the fun which those who attended the event enjoyed.
Business event images can also be used to extend the life of an event beyond its official end date. A photograph featuring a visitor dancing wildly in excitement during a music show which formed part of an exhibition’s repertoire of entertainment acts could be posted on the exhibition organisers’ Facebook after the event with an appeal for the dancer to call at its offices for a surprise prize such as a branded give away. The same could be done for an image featuring a delegate standing and applauding a particularly important point during a conference, symposium or workshop presentation. This post-event engagement prolongs the event’s duration on the market and in the minds of many.
Some images of good quality may not find ready use both during and in the aftermath of an event. These may be used in normal brand communication messages such as website galleries or as relevant illustrations in the organiser or exhibitors’ blog posts. Some business organisations regularly release e-versions of newsletters. Some images may also be used in illustrating stories in such publication thereby assisting the entities to meet their brand marketing communications objectives.
Shot list
When one is satisfied with the quality of images delivered and come up with their potential uses, they should check the shot list which was given to the photographer as part of his brief to ensure that all the shots have been delivered. Where shots are missing the matter can always be raised with the photographer for correction,
Storing business event images
Business event images can be used to build a stock of photographs which can be used in future for various purposes such as various brand marketing communications assignments. This helps the business organisation to avoid having to resort to stock images for such purposes. Stock images, while seemingly convenient have their dangers such as copyright infringement and sharing the same image with other brands making the resultant marketing message look very ordinary.
A well-maintained bank of business images can be sold to users such as magazine publishers, book writers and publishers and even advertising agencies among others.
Images can be stored in CD or memory stick but these are subject to loss given the mobility afforded by their size. One way of going round this involves using external hard drives. These have the advantage of large storage space. Photographs and videos by nature take up lots of storage device space which necessitates buying many memory sticks as events images accumulate. An external hard drive does away with this.
The large storage space provided by external hard drives can tempt one to just pour all images into the storage medium without regard for the future. When a particular image is required for use it would be a mammoth task to plough through hundreds of images before locating it. To avoid this, a system of folders can be used. Images can be sorted by event and year. For example a company can create folders for all the major exhibitions which it participates in. Subfolders for each year participated can the created so that images for a given are slotted into one folder.
Individual images can then be names to ease the future task of searching for it. There is no avoiding going through all the folders if images with particular characteristics are being sought but no one remembers in which year they were taken. It is better dealing with one folder after another than going through hundreds of unorganised images.
In cases where images are still few the official charged with the stewardship of business event images can sent himself copies of the images by e-mail so that when required all s/he does is retrieve the images from the e-mail message.
