Tuesday, March 9, 2010

SXSW Tips: Documenting Your Experience With Photos

Pics, or it didn’t happen, right? I always bring my digital camera to SXSW with extra memory cards and charged batteries and the battery charger. And a camera cable or card reader to transfer images to my computer. It might help to clear off some hard drive space (and do a backup) before you arrive.

By the way, if you plan on putting your extra camera batteries into checked luggage and it’s lithium, put it in a separate plastic baggie.

Oh, and do turn off the fake shutter sound on your camera. Nothing says “I’m a newbie taking a picture of the panel! Look at me!” like hearing those little beeps. Same for your smart phone: turn off any annoying “fake shutter” sounds if you can.

Before you leave, set your smartphone up to send photographs to your preferred mobile uploading service: Twitpic, Yfrog, Flickr, etc. and your favorite uploading application. I like to set it up so that Flickr automatically adds a “sxsw” or “sxsw 2010” tag, too.

You may also want to post your photos to Twitter using the #sxsw or #sxswi hashtag.