I spent most of this week prepping for and photographing a Gemalto Conference here in Austin. We have been very lucky to have forged a great relationship with Allied PRA and the Gemalto event is one of the conferences we worked with them on.
It’s always interesting when you work an event for an event planner. It doesn’t always go well. We have had mixed experiences with working with corporate and private event planners. Several times inn the past we have been hired by other event companies to do photography for their clients, and on a few occasions we have come up against some big challenges. Working directly with a client I always know what they expect, but when there is an event planner in the mix, I usually don’t even have a chance to talk with the event client. Remember that gossip game where you sit in a big circle and tell the person next to you something and they, in turn, are supposed to relay the same information to the person next to them until it goes all the way around the circle. Just like in that game, communication can easily get messed up with a third party in the middle. Things don’t always sound the same after being repeated through more than one person. But, as I said, with Allied PRA we haven’t had any such issues. Communication is never perfectly understood, but in general, working with Grace, Katie and the rest of the team there has always been a joy.
The Gemalto conference was especially fun to photograph. Convention and conference photography can be quite boring sometimes. Especially when the only thing photographed is rooms full of people watching a speaker at the front of the room. But with Gemalto we got to photograph a lot of fun stuff. They had a party out at The Salt Lick the first night, with dance instructors, a scavenger hunt around downtown and UT campus the next morning… beginning at the AT&T Conference Center, and a hilarious song writing and performance competition last night at the Gibson Showroom on South Congress. Gemalto is all over the world, so the attendees all spoke other languages and spoke with wonderful accents. And they sure knew how to give a photographer something great to photograph.
Here are a few of my favorites from the competition last night.
- Kate -
We still got to use some of our new baby props, and the session turned out to be a huge success. I can’t wait to finish retouching the images.
