Event Photography: Charleston Library Conference
Several years ago, I was photographing Charleston Library Conference founder Katina Strauch for the College of Charleston when she said those magic words, “Do you have a card? I need a photographer!” I did, thankfully!
I was thrilled to connect with the Charleston Library Conference and photograph their “Fast Pitch” session at the Gaillard Center that year, and then I got to do it all again the next year.
Fast-forward to this year, and I was the photographer for several of the daytime sessions at the Charleston Library Conference, and each session was frankly fascinating in its own right. (Listen, one of the speakers even surprised us all when he did his own rendition of “Old Town Road” and I’m pretty sure that man gave rapper Lil Nas X a solid run for his money.)
The Charleston Library Conference is an informal gathering of librarians, publishers, electronic resource managers, consultants, and vendors of library materials that takes place in downtown Charleston in November each year. The annual conference, which was started in 1980, is billed as “a collegial gathering of individuals from different areas who discuss the same issues in a non-threatening, friendly, and highly informal environment.”
Hands down, my favorite part of being a conference photographer is getting to listen to all these amazing speakers and experts in their respective fields as a fly on the wall. In the last year, I’ve had the privilege of listening to female master chefs and restaurateurs, leading financial advisors, legal counsel to the FBI and NSA, and now some really passionate and inspiring librarians discussing the issues of publishing in the digital age, the responsibility of publishers and libraries, and the importance of maintaining an electronic archive. I can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store!