What do I want from my Con or event experience…..?

I see this question posted for several different Ageplay events. People say they want to be able to feel truly little, have their diaper changed by somebody, meet a mommy, find some really cute outfits, being bottle fed, breastfed, eat baby food in a high chair, etc…

What I really want to experience and for other attendees to experience is the ability to attend the event, stop at a photography setup, get your photo taken and have the option to email, text or print that photo. So they have memories of their time at the event before it becomes a faint memory.

Right now there is a group of people who attended CapCon in March of 2018!! Who are still waiting on their photos. There is no excuse for this! I can see it taking a couple months after the debacle from 2017 when people who were ‘red bands’ having their photos sent out.

What’s a reasonable amount of time… Ideally most people want them by the time they get home from the event. If an event cannot do this then 1-2 months at the most, any longer and it is taking too long.

So what could or should be done to allow people to get those photos back sooner.

First off setup a photo area that is ONLY opened to just ‘ green bands’. This should be an area where you would need to purposely enter to have photos taken. This takes care of the need to sort through eliminating red bands. This eliminates the step of sorting through and finding any photos of red bands.

Set strict rules that if a red band attempts to get in a photo which they have opt’d out of, they do so at their own risk of their photo being released.

Only do candid walk around shots for the event’s internal use, and sending those to attendees should be secondary.. The candids and posed photos are kept totally separate, as getting the pre-vetted green band only files sorted will go quicker since every person should be a green band. Use the facial recognition feature of Lightroom if needed to speed the process.

How can you instantly deliver photos while protecting security so others cannot access the photos.

While I don’t mind having photos taken, I don’t want everybody to have access to them. I used a system at CapCon 2019 that worked well*. We were setup in a certain area all weekend that had a backdrop setup. I would have liked if we had access to say a rocking horse or trike, but i own neither nor did i have room for them in the van.

Basically we had a camera connected to a laptop. That laptop runs a tethered capture program that takes the file from the camera and gives it an eight character code, 5 letters and 3 numbers, guaranteed not to repeat in a long time. From here we have options…..

  1. Apply artwork/logos and resize and print the file automatically. The photo has the image code on it where the guest can enter it in a sharing kiosk to email or text (or print another copy if a group pic)
  2. Apply artwork//logos, resize file and save it. Then print a claim slip
  3. Do both

Once the guest has their file # they can either print the photo, email or text it. The kiosks are set so that they don’t display any photo unless the code is entered, and the complexity of the code would keep somebody from guessing one of the codes.

This method takes the task of sorting and later emailing the guests off the shoulders of the event organizers, so they can focus on their event. Also through strict data controls, the photographer permanently deletes all files after the event ends**.

If an event even wanted to, an online gallery could be setup to keep the photos online, which I use when i do Santa and Easter Bunny photos. This system can be utilized for all sorts of event photography.

Keep in mind this service is not done free of charge, due to the costs associated with the photo paper, time and investment of the software. I always try to keep the pricing as low as possible to cover my expenses, and time. I was open 16+ hours during CapCon, plus the time it took to setup and tear down daily.

Now you saw a couple statements starred, let me explain.

* the system we used at CapCon worked well enough… it did its job. The problem was i tested the windows tablets with a small number of photos that it had to look through, when we got towards Sunday there were a couple hundred photos that the underpowered cheap tablets had to look through. This caused it to take sometimes 15-30 seconds to retrieve the photo and display on screen. This is easily fixed by using an actual laptop, which has more processor power.

** I actually kept the photos on that laptop for about 7 days after i came home, because there were people who did not receive their photos via email due to hotmail.com/live.com/outlook.com bouncing the emails. Since the codes are not possible to guess there is very little chance of somebody getting somebody else’s photos (they’d have to find their claim slip and even then would have no clue who’s photo it was)