Photographing 75,000 People: Pictures from Earth Day Texas

I love large-scale events. They get me excited as a Dallas corporate event photographer. Over the past twelve years that I have shot as an event photographer in Dallas, I have discovered how much I enjoy logistics and problem solving. For many of the shoots that I do, figuring out the how can sometimes be more challenging than the photography itself.

In the spring, I was hired to cover Earth Day Texas here in Dallas. If you haven’t heard about this incredible event, it is a three-day festival held in Dallas in April that covers a huge amount of topics that are environmentally focused.

It is the largest Earth Day event in the world, and with that comes a lot of attendees, speakers, presentations, exhibits, programs, and a whole lot more. Suffice it to say there is a lot of ground to cover, both figuratively and literally. In order to take on an event of this magnitude, I assembled a team of five Dallas photographers, myself included, to cover the various areas of importance.

Each person on my photography team had a specific stage to cover for the event when it was in full swing. They had these stages distributed throughout the different exhibit halls to provide learning and information to those visiting the exhibitor booths. We also covered other events, receptions, etc. that were going on within the festival itself, and had the opportunity to grab some general coverage as well.

I photographed everything from speeches by Karenna Gore and Dan Patrick to a presentation on bats and the celebration of 100 years of the National Park System. There was tree climbing for kids, a tiny house tour, live music and I can’t even begin to list the speakers and topics that were photographed by my event photo team. I just know that I treasured getting to be a human sponge during many of the presentations that I covered.

I learned how Home Depot was doing their part for the environment by beginning to only carrying flooring materials made without toxic chemicals, and how the city of New York carried out a revolutionary recycling program.

Plus those bats were super cool! I get to not only document, but also learn about new things, or what people and organizations are up to in this world. In this case, it was all about people and organizations that are trying to save the world.

So with all of the photography coverage that my team and I performed, I’m sure you have a particular question in mind. It’s one that I often get as event photographer: “So how many images did you shoot?” or “How many photos do you think you will end up taking for this event?” It’s a fair question, and though I have a general idea of how much I will shoot at an event, the individual factors of any given event can greatly swing the number that I’m thinking of.

Since I’m focused on making sure I have the events covered thoroughly, I don’t worry about what my image counts are, but since I decided to write this particular blog I became very curious about what I edited. All in all, over fifteen thousand images were shot in about three and a half days between five photographers.

Yes, 15,000.

15k. However you say it, that’s a lot of photos, and a lot of coffee required for editing. The final folder of everything is over 300 gigabytes. I’m glad that hard drives keep getting bigger!

It was a fun shoot with some outstanding programs, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with for next year!