Event Photography with a (Social) Purpose
I am delighted to share that photographs I took for Slaithwaite Moonraking Festival have been published in Yorkshire Life Magazine in a main feature about Moonraking’s mighty return to a fully in person event this year!
The images have also been used in a local news article HERE and have now been picked up by a national outlet being featured in the Great British Life Magazine HERE reaching a much wider audience, showcasing their wonderful event and the impact that it creates in our community.
In this blog I want to celebrate the Yorkshire Life article, explore the connection of event photography to our social purpose and consider the benefits to community projects of hiring a professional photographer.
I’ve been an event photographer for many years (the Moonraking photos pre-date Our Creative Connection) but they serve to illustrate the point of this blog post perfectly - once you have a set of professional photographs they can be used time and again to promote your project or cause.
Event photography is one of the trading activities that supports Our Creative Connection’s social aims and objectives. Not only is it about generating income which helps us to deliver the change we are seeking to create in the world, but the majority of our customers are working in the social and community sector and we want to help them achieve their aims too.
I take on commercial projects of all shapes and sizes under the banner of Our Creative Connection with the majority being to help community events, projects and good causes illustrate the impact of their work - either through one off event photography or by documenting a project over time.
You can see more details of event photography work HERE and some more recent examples of community events supported such as Conscious Youth HERE Ella Dawson Foundation HERE and Remembering Srebenica HERE.
The photographs we create are often also used for marketing and promotional purposes. They can be used to create brochures, flyers, and social media posts that help to promote the project and attract new supporters.
Through our event photography we can showcase the people and places involved - helping to create a sense of pride and investment in the event or project. By working with a project over time, capturing images at different stages we can create a visual record of the project's development and impact which can be useful for evaluating impact. I recently just completed a 12 month project with Employability Solutions using this approach, see HERE for more details.
It will be no surprise to you then dear reader that I think photographs can play a valuable role in supporting the wider impact. They can be used to effectively communicate the goals and progress of a project, create a sense of community ownership and engagement as well as document progress of a project over time, and of course help with marketing and promotion.
I am hugely grateful to have been involved in some wonderful projects and I am currently working on some very exciting ones that I can’t wait to share with you!
If you have an event or project that would benefit from a new level of visual appeal then please get in touch hello@ourcreativeconnection.org