Guest photos and getting them to the guests at the event

At an upcoming veteran's reunion, I've volunteered to take photos of guests as they come in. It's about a 400 person event. Basically, it'll be similar to a wedding type of reception where people arrive, will take a couple of group shots and then go to their tables. There will be assigned tables, but I expect people may relocate themselves as they identify old friends and wish to sit near one another.

My wife and I will be stationed to take photos and print. What's the best way to do this?

I was thinking taking all of the photographs and then handing the cards periodically to my wife to download, pull into Lightroom and then print on a Pro100.

We haven't come up with an idea on how to distribute the photos, either. I could ask for table #s and just drop them off, but it'll be hard to keep track of the photos and tables, right?

Ideas welcome.

That's a heck of a lot of pictures.

I have seen where they just lay the pictures out on a table and the people can find theirs and pick them.

Either that or you can record the image number and the person's name associated with it. Once printed you can put a little sticker on the back with their name, arrange them alphabetically as you print. They then can come to you and ask fro their print by name.

When I do events of this style, I shoot with a background and tripod right near the entrance door. I shoot tethered to a PC via USB with two Canon dyesub CP1200 printers to make quick 4 by 6 photos. Assistant 1 does a quick selection of the best images, and send them to a printer with 1 copy per person in the photo. I have cardboard frames custom printed with the event name and they are arranged in order on a large table for pickup on the way out.

Dyesub photos are resistant to moisture, print cost is $.30 ea, and print speed is 1 per minute. With 2 printers and a good assistant, you should be able to print 80-100 photos per hour and handle a 4 hour event with up to 200 people. With larger groups you may need more than 1 assistant and a high speed thermal printer like a Mitsubishi 9550

As you can see, event printing is costly and demanding. I charge $1500 for on site event printing. If you are volunteering, I would simply have business cards printed with a custom photo gallery link on SmugMug or Zenfolio for later orders.

I wouldn't underestimate the complexity and pace of this. An event that size with people all arriving at the same time there's no way one camera would be able to photograph everyone, let along photo and print. If you print and put on a table you'll probably need to take names so they can be organised alphabetically.

A few photo stations and a card for online orders would be practical. If you really want to print then 3-5 printers is probably what you need.

It's not that I'm underestimating this. I think I understand the heavy lift and challenge. It's too bad, though, because I'm all they got basically. It's going to be me and my wife working this table. We actually did something similar at our wedding in 2010. A friend took photos of us and the guests (200 of them) and I set up a single printer in the back and had a couple people work together to print them.

But like I said. I'm all they got. My father-in-law is helping organize this (he's one of the veterans) and the group of them asked for me to do this.\\

Our station is simply to have people stand on an X and we'll have people take photos in front of a spot in the restaurant where this is held. I'll have a single umbrella strobe set up and everyone gets the same shot next to the group's logo.

I'm thinking now to shoot tethered on a tripod. That way, I can walk back and forth to the computer and check on things as my wife can keep track of people's photos/file numbers and names/tables. This way, we can at least sort of identify them and tell them if they don't receive their photo they can come back to us and look for them. Most of the guests will arrive towards the beginning of the several hour program... so there will be mad rush at the beginning. Then when that crowd dies down, we can start to printing and sorting.

I've never shot tethered before and not sure how my computer will handle it. We'll see how this all goes.

Plan was totally ditched. The logo/backdrop the organizing committee was going to provide was seized by said committee for another random guy-with-a-camera, so it didn't make sense for me to take photos of the guests as originally asked of me. Just went around to take photos throughout the night and had decided not to print anything on the spot... MUCH easier.

Nathan wrote in post #18421168
Plan was totally ditched. The logo/backdrop the organizing committee was going to provide was seized by said committee for another random guy-with-a-camera, so it didn't make sense for me to take photos of the guests as originally asked of me. Just went around to take photos throughout the night and had decided not to print anything on the spot... MUCH easier.

One of the challenges of volunteer photography work is that nobody is invested or makes a firm commitment to you until $$$ is agreed on. So often when trying to help a friend or organization, many key factors will change completely outside of your control. If nobody has to make a firm commitment to you, there is often additional photographers, poor communication with decision makers, and radical production changes at the last possible second. I prefer to get negotiate a fair price, establish the value of my services, get all the production details right, and give the fee back as a donation than volunteer when nobody cares.

Scott Spellman wrote in post #18421475
One of the challenges of volunteer photography work is that nobody is invested or makes a firm commitment to you until $$$ is agreed on. So often when trying to help a friend or organization, many key factors will change completely outside of your control. If nobody has to make a firm commitment to you, there is often additional photographers, poor communication with decision makers, and radical production changes at the last possible second. I prefer to get negotiate a fair price, establish the value of my services, get all the production details right, and give the fee back as a donation than volunteer when nobody cares.

Good advice. It was more of a favor to my father-in-law for me to just be available AND to be flexible.

I ended up just going table to table taking photos of guests. Put the photos up on Flickr (www.flickr.com/atbdbos​ton). Mixed lighting situation - between posting up the photos quickly versus color correcting, chose to post photos up quickly.

I'm not great at these types of things, but I can taking the learning experience from it. Need to remember to stop down more often to get people into focus on group shots.