One of the things I love about doing conference, convention and tradeshow photography is the opportunity it gives me to learn by osmosis.  As I’m shooting keynotes, workshops and breakout sessions, I get to absorb the content being presented.  In fact in many ways, I can do a better job if I have some understanding of what’s being presented.

In this way, I’ve gotten to learn a little about a wide variety of topics, including school safety, the less obvious challenges faced by the blind, how to get your high school junior into the college of their choice, the long-term effects of global warming on the practice of architecture, how to design a city to withstand a category 3 hurricane, and the caveats to consider when administering massage therapy to cancer patients.  This last one is something I heard about last week as I covered the national convention of the American Massage Therapy Association, held at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

It sounds like a bad joke to say that this was a ‘hands on’ event, but as the photos show, attendees had plenty of opportunities to learn new techniques, and I certainly had a lot of fun shooting them as they practiced their craft.

I’ve just created a new gallery on my photography site consisting solely of meeting, conference, and convention photography.  I’ve done a lot of this sort of work over the years, having photographed events for clients ranging from Yamaha and Home Depot to Liberty Mutual Insurance and the American Planning Association, and it was about time that I dedicated a gallery to this work.

There’s an energy and a vibe to meetings and events that I really enjoy, and I work hard to capture this in my photographs.  Whether it’s an executive presenting an award to an employee dressed as a pirate, or conference attendees diving into a buffet, or a gospel choir entertaining convention delegates, meetings and events are concentrated moments in time filled with all sorts of photographic possibilities.

I traveled to New Orleans earlier this year to cover the annual conference of the American Planning Association.  As part of this coverage, I accompanied conference attendees, who are urban and city planners, city planning officials, and educators in the planning field, on a tour of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, the part of the city most devastated by hurricane Katrina.

More than five years after the storm, it is obvious that it will be a very long time, if ever, before this neighborhood fully recovers.  But while there is plenty for residents to be pessimistic about, I was struck by the dogged optimism of the residents I spoke to.  One spoke of the many months of having to live “frontier style” – no services like drinking water, electricity, or sewer, no mail, along with having to carry a gun to protect what little they still had.  And yet, this resident was cautiously upbeat about the future, and looking forward to moving back into her house this winter.

Dealing with a cancer diagnosis or the news that you need an organ transplant is more than enough to test the maturity and emotional stability of a well-adjusted adult, but how does a young child handle such a thing?  Starlight Children’s Foundation’s mission is to help seriously ill children and their families cope with the pain, fear and isolation that comes with fighting such difficult conditions.  One way they do this is by holding special parties that give an ill child and their entire family a break from the day-to-day stresses of hospitals and doctors, and offer the opportunity to just be a kid.