How to track photos at an event? (link photo to subject)

I have been doing quite a few corporate events as of late where we shoot photos of employees at an event and then the company sends the employee the photo afterwards.

An example is a Corporate Christmas Party. the kids line up and we would take the employee's name and take the photo, then write the photo number beside the name.

This requires someone to take names and put the right number beside the name.

I do enough of these that I would like to find a better way. Maybe something with a barcode that can embed right into the EXIF, or some other automated process.

I have seen a system out of the UK for Nikon that does this, but I shoot Canon.

Anyone know of a good way to keep track of hundreds of people and their associated photos from an event?

I am not opposed to buying hardware/software to do this, but would like to keep the costs down (yah I am cheap :P )

If you arent opposed to low tech, have the subject fill out a form for posed photos. Shoot two frames, one showing the card ala mug shot photos, and then you have captured the info in a frame thats good until you change subjects.

Hey Gonzogolf,

I have tried that method in the past. it has worked okay for some events but others it didn't work for. I ended up just always having someone there taking names and adding numbers. sometimes the low-tech ways are the best,

figured with so many wireless devices out there today there must be a cool simple way to take advantage of that and streamline things even more.

Hello,
1. Do you have a web site like Zenfolio where you can post all the photos and have them look and download any pic they want. you can also password protect the images.
You are talking about 100's of photo from the party, no payment is being made on that day right..?
2. get the email address from them and email the image...'email and frame number'....done.

Joe

I also do a decent amount of high volume photography and I have the people complete a form with name and contact info and when they get their photo I write the sequence number in the corner. I used to write the actual file number but that was far more of a hassle and I couldn't find any real advantage to it so now I just start at 1 and count up. As long as you keep the forms in order, you really don't even need the sequence number. It's for "just in case". This is the simplest approach I've found and it doesn't take two people.

I am just wondering what is the purpose to inform the subjects about the photos? Are you trying to sell them? Did you receive permission to do so by the event organizer? Did you get paid shooting the event?

I think that the paying subjects are the event organizers themselves. If they aren't paying, I just can't see the staff would. Like a wedding....the paying party is the bride and groom. Not the guests or uncle Bob.

i_am_cdn wrote in post #15249681
I do enough of these that I would like to find a better way. Maybe something with a barcode that can embed right into the EXIF, or some other automated process.

I have seen a system out of the UK for Nikon that does this, but I shoot Canon.

Canon do,or used to, make a version of the 7D called the 7DSV, it worked with the WiFi transmitter grip and was able to name photos with input from a barcode reader into the USB port on the grip.

The easiest option is to shoot tethered into a laptop, we have custom software that allows this using a barcode reader.

There are a number of different applications that support tethered shooting that allow you to input information about the shot at the time of shooting. This doesn't work if you are working through a crowd shooting tables or similar but it has worked well for me when doing events and we are setup to take a photo of each couple as they enter. Prior to having this we simply had them hold up a card that we either wrote their name on or one with a number on it that a second person was recording the information. I have found that shooting events like this really requires you to have a second person that can do the paperwork. A good example of this would be DSLR Remote by Breeze Systems. If you are using a body that supports it (such as the 1 series) you can use the voice comment to simply say the persons name and it is attached to that image. The following is an short explanation for this from a review of the 1Dx though it is not new to that model.

Feature worth mentioning is the unique ability of Canon's 1-Series bodies to record 30 second voice memos to captured images. This is an excellent way to remember information pertaining to a photo - including the names of the subjects. Audio is recorded at 48KHz, or, new with the 1D X, an 8KHz sampling frequency for smaller file sizes can be selected in the Custom Functions menu.

wow im confused... maybe wrong thread?
sry cdn

@mattertea,

who are your questions directed at?