An event photo workflow for multi-photographer teams

One photographer can cover a 5K. A marathon, a triathlon or a three-day festival needs a team, and a team needs a plan. Without one, you get duplicate uploads, a finish-line folder that arrives last, and nobody sure who's covering the bridge at mile 18. This article sets out a workflow that works for teams of two to twenty, from planning positions to the last original landing.

Before the event: plan the positions

Start from the course map and the event timetable. For each position, write down:

• Where: start, a named point on the course, the finish, the presentations.
• When: the window in which participants pass, from the first to the last.
• Who: one person per position, with a backup if you have one.
• What: the shots that sell from that spot. Head-on at the finish, action on a climb, groups at the start.

The finish is the most valuable position at almost every event. If you're short of people, it gets your strongest shooter for the whole window.

Sync the clocks

Before anyone leaves for their position, every shooter sets their clock to the same time, to the second if possible. When photos from several people are combined, matching times means a participant can browse the moment they passed each point, and you can answer "I was at the bridge at about 10:40" in minutes.

Agree a folder scheme

Folders are the backbone of a team upload. Agree the scheme before the event and write it down:

• One collection per location (Start, Mile 6, Finish) is usually best for participants browsing.
• One collection per shooter is simpler when positions change during the day.
• Big events often use both: a collection per location, and inside your own computer, a sub-folder per shooter.

Whatever you choose, keep names identical across the team. "Finish" and "finish-line" become two collections.

Roles and access

Not everyone on a team needs to see everything. On Photohawk, workspaces have roles: owner, administrator, upload-only and sales-only access. A freelance second shooter can be upload-only, a bookkeeper sales-only. You can also add gallery collaborators for a single gallery. How many people a workspace can include depends on the plan; see the pricing page.

On the day: upload as you go

The old way was to shoot all day and upload all night. With a team, you can do much better:

1. Upload the finish first. It's what most people look for, and it's where most sales and downloads happen.
2. Upload side by side. Each shooter uploads their own folders with the web uploader. It sends many photos at once and adjusts to the connection, so several people can upload from the venue at the same time.
3. Go live on previews. On every plan, choose previews first and the gallery can go live in minutes while the originals follow. A 10,000-photo gallery can be live in about 8 minutes on a 20 Mbps upload. See how fast event photos can go online.
4. Let drops look after themselves. If a connection drops, the uploader resumes on its own. If someone has to close it, adding the same folder again later sends only what's missing.

If someone on the team relies on FTP, they can start their own on-demand FTP server, on every plan, at a personal address that never changes. Photos sent by FTP upload as originals in one go, so use the web uploader for the folders you want live first.

Culling as a team

Agree a light-touch cull: remove blinks, blur, empty frames and anything unflattering. Keep everything where a participant is recognisable. One person reviewing everyone's work slows the whole team down, so trust each shooter to cull their own folders to the agreed standard.

Leave careful edits for later. Participation photos sell on the moment, not the grade.

After it's live

• Share the link with the organiser for the results email and social posts.
• Watch the gallery. The uploader's status bar shows how many people are viewing the gallery right now, on every plan.
• Keep the uploaders open until the originals finish. If someone buys a photo before its original arrives, that original jumps the queue, so buyers aren't kept waiting.
• Handle questions in one place. Decide who answers participants. On Photohawk, buyers' questions go to Photohawk support unless you set your own address.

Plan storage for big events

Event JPEGs are often around 10 MB each, so 100,000 originals are roughly a terabyte. Check how much storage your plan includes, and what extra storage costs, on the pricing page before the event.

A team checklist

• Positions, windows and names on one sheet.
• Clocks synced before anyone leaves.
• Folder names agreed and written down.
• Roles set: who uploads, who sees sales.
• Finish uploaded first, previews first.
• Link sent to the organiser as soon as the gallery is live.

The Photohawk web uploader is built for events of more than 100,000 photos. To try this workflow on your next event, create a free Studio account and invite your team.