The Best Photo of Gnomedex

[...] When Chris and Ponzi asked if I would take photographs of Gnomedex for them, I had about the same reaction that as if someone asked me to photograph their wedding: “Are you sure”?! Doing a good job of photographing a conference is hard work, and having watched my friend James Duncan Davidson do it, I know how much work it is, and the level of pictures that someone like James is producing. In the end, they assured me that they were not looking for “O’Reilly quality” photographs, and I promised them that I would do my best. Here’s my Flickr set for Gnomedex 6.0, which contains (what I think) are the best of the photographs that I took. It’s a very different experience to be just running around a conference with a camera, and being on the hook to try and really record what is going on. You don’t want to miss anything, and you want to make sure that the photos that you take don’t portray people in an unflattering light. Practically, this means lots of running around and moving round the room to try to get different angles and magnifications of people. During the course of the pre-party and the two days of Gnomedex, I shot a total of 1578 frames, and by the end of the show, I was totally pooped out. It turns out that camera equipment is heavy if it is in your hand all day. Of course, there are also benefits. If you are walking around with a “big camera”, along with an external flash, and a monopod, people are very accomodating. Lots of people stopped to let me get a shot, I leaned over many desks, stood on chairs and countertops, and no one said a word. I also got access to some things that other people didn’t like private photo ops with John Edwards in the green room. There was also a fun community thing that happened. It turned out that one of the best places to shoot was right down in front, in the aisle. That spot turned into a little hangout for the photo crazies at Gnomedex. Scott Beale, who I finally met in person, wisely set up his base camp right in the front row, so he had a seat and full access to his computer. Kris Krug was down there often, although sometimes it felt lik he was spending more time shooting me than shooting the stage. Dan Farber also came down quite a number of times to grab some shots. A couple of anecdotes from the photographer’s view. When Edwards came out on stage, there was a huge burst of flashes. The burst was very visible from where I was in the front row. After that died down, people in the front row were probably deafened by the sound of Scott, Kris, me, and the official Seattle PI photographer. It was click, click, click, click. It was pretty funny. Ironically, the most likely to be remembered shot was not taken by Kris, Scott, or me. When Chris went into his Michael Jackson routine, all of us were using fairly long lenses, and focusing in just on Chris. I don’t know about Scott or Kris, but I couldn’t see the “Think Small” text on the screen behind Chris. But Josh Bancroft saw it, and he got the shot and piped it up via his EVDO connection. Just goes to show that it’s not the equipement that makes the shot. I’d guess that Josh is pretty glad that he “caved” and got a new camera. For Speakers James has already written a great essay giving speakers tips on being photographed well. I would add a few more things. [...]

[...] You can grab the slides as a PDF (180K) or the original Keynote (1.8MB) (CC Attribution-ShareAlike license). Or, if you’re like Chris Pirillo and you feel inspired, you can grab yourself. Tags: citizen agency, gnomedex, think small [...]

[...] Washington (See more photos here) 47°36′ 41″ N, 122°20′ 59″ W47.611508-122.349586 My blog post for this photo. Chris Pirillo’s reaction shot of this photo being shown during the conference. Scoble wonders why [...]