The Media Production and Technology Show (MPTS) is a big show, and getting bigger year on year. Held at London Olympia, this year it brought together over 13,000 industry professionals for two days of “conversation, collaboration and community. MPTS is where the entire UK media and broadcast industry comes together.”

It was a precursor of this show that, back in the early nineties, I was brought to whilst on a work experience placement. In the midst of my A-levels and eager to become a Graphic Designer, the video production company I was spending time with took me to that year’s equivalent of MPTS in London. I don’t recall what it was called, but a conference centre filled with a world of lights, cameras, and other television gadgets had a big effect on me. Causing me to pivot from a Graphic Design degree at the prestigious Ravensbourne, to an HND in Media Production at the slightly more scrappy Farnborough Tech. — a move I’ve never regretted.

MPTS is too large a show for one photographer to cover, so I was one of a gang of three, with three lecture theatres and half of the main show floor to cover for my part of the deal.

Working as a photographer can be a pretty lonely existence on most jobs, so it was really nice to work with two others who were working to the same brief, facing the same challenges and sharing similar war stories. One of the takeaways from studying my MA was that although photographers are often a solitary animal, others of the species should always be seen as opportunities for learning rather than a threat to one’s practice.

The brief was to capture photos of each of the speakers or panelists in the lecture theatres, to get shots of people enjoying the show, to photograph demonstrations and interesting technologies, and crucially to document the show layout and sponsorship opportunities that the event organisers may wish to sell next year.

These latter aspects of a show are usually ignored or avoided when photographing an event, but the advertising pasted on floors, wall banners, lanyards etc. are all key revenue points for the organiser and opportunities for brands to get their message out to a wide audience.

Whilst most images could be delivered within a day of the event closing, there was a need to provide highlight photographs at the end of each day for social media use.

I started off by trying to tick off all of the speakers and panellists on a small paper copy of the conference schedule, but I quickly found that I simply didn’t have enough hands to wrangle two cameras, a pen, paper, and phone whilst keeping all the other gubins that was in my pockets from falling out. With the individual conference slots lasting between 30 and 40 minutes, I realised it was easier to simply maintain a 25-minute loop around between each theatre to photograph every speaker and capture the general goings on within the trade show on the walks in between.

On day two, With early access to the trade show floor, I was able to spend the early morning documenting every booth so that there was a catalogue of how each size of space had been used by exhibitors, as well as to capture clean photos of branding opportunities.

At many events like this wifi and 4/5G connectivity are a challenge. It’s not that the networks aren’t available, it is just because during the show they become so heavily contended as 15,000 people suddenly try to share a single cell tower or jump onto the broadband connection coming into the building. As such, data sharing between photographers and client was via the trusty USB stick, and I really like these that I picked up from Amazon ahead of the show, as they have both USB-A and USB-C interfaces to accommodate the vastly unpredictable nature of what someone’s laptop may or may not have.

Neither of these options is useful though if the client’s IT department has disabled the use of USB ports on their field laptops.

Another challenge of event photography is data wrangling: the less fun side of photography where no matter how fast your Mac is when shooting thousands of images per day there is still a wait while you copy images from SD cards, import them into your editor of choice, and wait for proxy images to be generated before you can finally start editing them for the client. This can take well over an hour, which can mean leaving the show floor early to hit the deliverable deadline for the day.

Fortunately, at MPTS, by 4pm most visitor activity is centred around the bar, and the lectures are drawing to a close which gave all of us time to put our pictures through post-production and make them ready for the end of day visitor email bulletin.

On the weekend after MPTS I spent a lot of time modifying my data workflow as I was sure there was a better way of managing things. Having spent a lot of my career designing and implementing complex media workflows for broadcasters, making a faster photo processing workflow for myself seemed well within my abilities. So, gone is the rugged LaCie hard drive I was using (too slow); it has been replaced by an SSD equivalent. I have changed my strategy for in-camera backups to using one massive and one small SD card rather than using two of the same size (a strategy to feature in a future blog, perhaps). And I have made far better use of Adobe Lightroom’s smart folders to categorise, process and publish photographs.

When I first came to MPTS there were technologies on show like flexicarts, Betacam tape machines and hot tungsten lighting. I probably brushed shoulders with other young men and women whom I have eventually worked with. The technology and our careers have all changed a lot since then.

Reflecting on how far the industry has come since that early experience, I’m struck by how these events not only showcase the latest technology in the industry but also shape the journeys of the people within it. Over the years, I’ve been to MPTS or its equivalent as a student, visitor, exhibitor, and now as a photographer.

These events have been important milestones in the careers of many. Catalysts for new employment when things are good, joint therapy sessions when things are less so. The camaraderie within the industry endures through it all, and it was good to see (and photograph) old colleagues over the two days of the event, and come away with new learnings and new friends.

MPTS Shooting the show that changed my career.