Live Photo Editing and Publishing Workflow - ESPN, Instagram, MLB, US Olympic Committee, US Soccer

Along with my partner at isiphotos.com, we created a solution to provide professional-level, edited photographs to clients on an as-live basis during events. The process was first put to the test at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brasil, and after a successful run, we partnered with Facebook and Instagram to create an “Insta-booth” for live events. We ran the Insta-booth style photo shoots at the ESPN X-Games, MLB All-Star Game, the US Women’s National Team, and USOC for the 2016 Rio Games.

The Task permalink

It is no secret the demand for real-time content has grown considerably, almost becoming a requirement for modern brands, especially in the sports world. We wanted to provide U.S. Soccer fans high quality, live images directly from the field during the team’s games at the FIFA World Cup, allowing them a distinct view through social media only available on U.S. Soccer platforms to supplement television viewing.

Similarly, the athletes themselves need to provide quality imagery to fans as their personal brands and social identities grow. With an adapted approach from the live on-field shoots, we created a photobooth type workflow to provide athletes and events stylized images that they could distribute on their own platforms.

The Challenges permalink

Speed.

After engaging with fans and social media staff, it became apparent that speed was a key factor is determining content's reach and interactivity - with the qualifier that fans did not expect the quality of the images to drop. Upon further examination of metrics for best performing social content, we did notice a "first to publish" type of pattern that confirmed posts with high quality imagery performed better than posts with no images or posts that were not among the first to announce major events, but had quality imagery.

Therefore, how could we make this process as fast as possible without sacrificing quality?

Giving fans a curated photo gallery after a game had been done before - we wanted to provide the same quality images in real time.

When working with athletes or singular clients, our challenge was to provide highly stylized images of exceptional quality that they could use directly after sitting for the photos. We wanted them to walk out of the studio space with images ready to be distributed via social or any web platform.

The Solutions permalink

Using network enabled cameras, we were able to come up with a solution that allowed the photographer to push photos to an FTP server.

On field at the FIFA World Cup, all photographers were allocated an ethernet cable at their assigned station around the pitch. We then utilized cloud storage platform Box.com’s ability to set up a directory as an FTP destination. Once configured, the photographer could set his/her camera to push selected photos to Box folder.

The cloud-FTP folder allowed an editor anywhere in the world to access the Box account and watch the folder as the photos transferred in. The social media team at U.S. Soccer headquarters in Chicago was able to monitor the photos in real time as the photographer pushed images from the field at the stadiums in Brasil. The average time from the photographer pressing the shutter to a photo appearing on Twitter/Facebook was about 8 minutes. In exceptional cases such as a goal, an expedited image could be pushed to social media in just more than 5 minutes.

In a studio environment, we employed a similar setup; the main difference being that the camera was directly tethered to a computer with a watch folder configured as an FTP destination. Using a combination of photo editing software and proprietary RAW presets, the editor could ingest and edit 5-10 photos of the subject, and upload them to a cloud sharing platform within 3-6 minutes. The web address of the private, personalized files was then shared with the athlete, their agent, or event staff.