Academic Event Photography - Not What I Expected

At the start of February, I was invited to shoot at the 2024 University of Toronto Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Mind (UTism 2024). I had just spotted the posting after joining the Discord channel and within an hour, I’d been brought on as the event photographer. A pleasant surprise for a first official gig!

I’ve collaborated with engineers and scientists in the past, but I really didn’t know anything about cognitive science, much less the issues and topics that it encompassed. The areas of expertise covered were truly vast, spanning philosophy and videogame AI, to computer engineering and childcare.

As always, the common thread that made the entire experience a blast was the breadth of characters present. From loud and colourful to quiet and reserved; contemplative and thoughtful to brilliant and iconoclastic, it seemed as if the entire academic world had descended upon this event. All said, the sheer level of intelligence in the room that weekend felt truly humbling and staggering.

Shoutout to the members of the Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence Students’ Association (CASA) for taking a chance on me and treating me as part of the team right from the get-go. It was an awesome time shooting and learning!

Tough crowd?

Nah, you got it!

Capturing Event Photographs as a Professional

Regardless of an event’s topics or subject matter, I’ve found that it’s the people there that give it value and make it memorable. The key to impactful event photography is to understand this and to be on the lookout for the moments when people make their contribution – big or small – to the event at large.

If you enjoyed these event photos, my portfolio can be found here and I can be contacted here.