"Unlock the full potential of your fundraising event with these six photography tips from 413 Custom Apparel. Despite the event's many demands, neglecting photography can lead to missed opportunities to engage supporters and showcase your cause. Discover the importance of early photography investments and follow these tips to capture compelling visuals: 1. Choose a dedicated photographer to focus on capturing key moments. 2. Compose a shot list to guide your photographer in capturing planned and spontaneous moments. 3. Embrace bold, distinctive, candid photography to convey the authentic vibe of the event. 4. Optimize video quality by holding the device horizontally and capturing meaningful event highlights. 5. Leverage social media post-event by selecting the best photos, tagging participants, and creating engaging captions. 6. Save your photos for future use, backing them up on an external hard drive and utilizing them for future campaigns, invitations, and engagement. These tips ensure your event memories translate into powerful storytelling tools for newsletters, reports, and promotional materials, maximizing the impact of your fundraising efforts."
All too frequently, the planning and execution of a fundraising event become so stressful that photography and videography suffer. It's simple to understand why many event organizers overlook photographic planning - these things don't make the event happen. Why squander resources on photography when there are much more pressing issues that need attention?
However, much like the money raised during your event, all of the wonderful small moments that occur throughout your event result from your hard work. Following the event, the pictures you capture will be an essential tool for engaging your fans on social media. Your photographs will eventually offer much-needed material for newsletters, email blasts, yearly reports, and blog entries. They may even assist you in promoting future events by eliciting pleasant memories from previous supporters and spark the curiosity of new ones. One of the best ways to ensure that your event photography investments are worthwhile is to focus on investing early rather than stressing about the approaching deadlines. Follow these six ways to make the most of your event with great pictures and video.
Facing the realization that you don't have time to take photos during the event is the first step. The ideal option is to choose a single individual who will have the entire duty of filming the event.
Don't be disheartened if you don't have the money to hire a professional photographer. Think carefully about who may be able to assist you, whether they are volunteers, friends, or even family members. It's probably one of those who think of themselves as a photographer.
However, keep in mind that your photographer must be at ease communicating with event participants. Choose someone who does not need their hand to be held — meekness may easily obstruct arranging group pictures and corralling VIPs. Rather than spending time gathering bravery, your photographer must be confident enough to approach people, introduce themselves, and begin taking photographs.
Identify the amateur photographer in your midst, or make photography a priority by employing a professional photographer. If you hire a photographer, you'll have the additional advantage of knowing they're experienced, know how to connect easily with guests, and will get those money-making images.
While you'll want the majority of your event photographs to seem as natural as possible, some moments are better planned. Creating a comprehensive shot list gives your photographer direction, enabling them to herd the appropriate individuals together for those must-have shots quickly.
Your shot list should include the event's VIPs' names, titles, and headshots. Locate these individuals through LinkedIn or Facebook and link photographs of their faces to their names in a document so that your photographer has to scan the room to identify the big dogs. Make a mental note of the different combinations of VIPs that must be seen together so that you can focus on the other tasks at hand during the event rather than following the photographer about with directions.
Finally, consider unique picture possibilities that will arise throughout the event. If a ribbon-cutting ceremony is held, who should stand beside the one holding the giant scissors? When an honoree receives an award, who should be shown congratulating her in her moment of glory? By creating a precise schedule of picture possibilities, you can guarantee that you capture all of the moments you want.
If you used 413 Custom Apparel to raise money before the event, all those synchronized t-shirts may make for an eye-catching snapshot — be sure to get a group shot of everyone dressed in their matched clothing. (Oh, and please email us a copy as well. We love seeing how you style your #413customapparel!)
Bold, distinctive candid photography often produces the most authentic and genuine photographs. Participants who shout "cheese" to a lens find it dull to repeat. Easy to shoot and wonderful to have, but staged photographs frequently fail to convey the authentic vibe of the event. To do this, ensure the lighting is enough, position the camera appropriately, and then have your photographer turn off the distracting flash while moseying about your event, so your participants won't be made self-conscious by the camera's presence.
These photos will document the audience's enthusiasm when a speaker makes a great point and the emotion around someone's eyes as they laugh at a joke. Once your audience feels as though they are seeing, feeling, and understanding human emotions, they will be able to identify with your video stories even better.
Everyone is equipped with a smartphone these days, allowing them to record video moments with only a push of a button. Even with cellphones, which have made us all amateur filmmakers, the flood of poorly filmed, badly edited, and utterly useless material is immense. As a general rule, if you want to shoot a significant portion of your event on video, do it right.
If your videographer is using a smartphone, be sure they understand how to hold the device sideways. We've all seen those weird, thin videos that come from vertically holding a phone. This all-too-common atrocity is perpetrated because this is the natural posture for our phones to be held. Additionally, some images urge us to frame them vertically, similar to how we would shoot anything. However, when you view the footage on a bigger screen after the event, you'll immediately regret it. Simply stated, vertical video footage will be useless for anything more than casual rewatching on the phone.
Having said that, there are occasions when static pictures just will not enough. Is there a live performance – maybe dance or music – at your event? Will there be some show, such as a charity dunk tank? Will a highly gifted speaker make a stirring speech? Choose an appropriate time for the video and begin filming!
Finally, after the event, spend some time editing the video into something viewable. Stabilize any shaky video, add suitable music and subtitles, and omit any dull segments - in short, keep your audience engaged.
After your event has ended, you've created a wonderful collection of pictures and videos to enjoy. Yes, it was a success. Far from it! In these exciting times, now is the time to get your organization's events goers, supporters, and volunteers engaged on social media. Select the finest pictures from your library to share with the community.
There is clearly no limit to how many pictures you'll post to Facebook or Instagram, but you should trim out as much fat as possible. People do not want to look through a collection of 50 identical pictures of the same individuals. Instead, pick the top-performing ones. When creating your post, don't utilize all of your most excellent photographs. Instead of storing these pictures just to have them used only once or twice, develop a strategy for them to be used all year long.
Tag as many people as you can; it makes tagging easier for others. To do this, you'll have to go through the research of finding all the faces on social media, as well as deducing who is on which site. Even so, forming new relationships with your fans and building your social media presence is worth the investment. In conclusion, remember to create clever captions that help the reader better understand your point. In this manner, you will ensure that your fans have an opportunity to spark a conversation by leaving a remark, and the album will consistently rank at the top of everyone's social media feeds.
In addition, if you come across a picture of your friends or colleagues wearing 413 Custom Apparel apparel, please mention us @413CustomApparel - we'll appreciate it!
In the future, you will discover many ways to put your vast collection of pictures to use. Back up your images so you won't lose them. Choose where to store the backups; it is a good idea to save them on an external hard drive rather than on the camera card, and it is not a good idea to use your Facebook album as the only complete backup. You're going to end up with lesser quality images since Facebook is compressing your photos to make them smaller.
However, what unforeseen possibilities may arise in the future? By showcasing your community in their 413CustomApparel t-shirts, you'll demonstrate the importance of sales to the future of your project. If you share a group photo of everyone wearing identical t-shirts, it'll inspire others who missed out last time. When marketing your next round of shirts, be sure to include these pictures in your campaign profile and utilize them on social media. Contact us if you're starting a new campaign, and we'll be glad to post your photos on your profile.
It would help if you also considered how you are connecting with your fans via writing. More than likely, your audience will never bother to read a long text-only email blast, blog post, or newsletter piece, regardless of how well-written or interesting it is; instead of allowing their eyes to drift over, wow them with one of your vibrant events pictures. Engaged readers are more likely to react to your fundraising efforts or requests for volunteers. If you are a charitable organization of any size, you may use the images to liven up your annual report. You'll convert a lifeless wall of text into a lively, dynamic narrative for your stakeholders.
Finally, if your event is an annual one, you'll quickly find yourself attracting new guests. What better way to encourage them to come than visual proof that it's going to be a blast? Include photographs from last year's event in your invites and watch the RSVPs pour in.