What to shoot
- Joy and connection: people laughing, leaning in, shaking hands mid-conversation, a group selfie at the deckchair. Real reactions, not posed lines.
- Main Stage Moments: the speaker mid-gesture with the branded backdrop behind, the crowd looking up, the band opening day one, the ClimbAwards walk-up.
- Find Your People: close conversations on the expo floor, Investor Speed Networking tables, roundtables in full flow.
- The texture of the festival: orange lanyards, badges, the photo wall, drinks being poured, trophies lined up, the food trucks, the after party lights.
- Wide establishing shots of a full room or a busy floor, one or two per day. Never an empty room.
How it should look
- Full colour, warm and bright. Keep the stage-light orange and the warmth of the room; do not desaturate or cool it down.
- Shallow depth of field for people (f/1.8 to f/2.8), so the subject pops and the background becomes colour and light.
- Faces in focus, eyes lit. Catch the moment just before or just after the laugh.
- Variety: for every wide, shoot three mediums and five close-ups. Landscape for the web and slides, portrait for stories and phone heroes.
Editing
- One consistent edit across an edition: warm white balance, lifted shadows that lean Dark Brown, natural skin, orange held saturated.
- Light retouching only (stray hairs, a blemish, a distracting exit sign). Never change who was there or what happened.
- Resolution: always the highest the camera allows. Shoot RAW at no less than 4K (3840px on the long edge); 6K is fine and 8K is ideal and never crop a delivered image below 3840px on its long edge.
- Deliver the RAW files plus full-resolution sRGB JPGs at quality 90. Web and social copies are exported from the full-resolution file at the size each placement needs, never upscaled.
- File names:
<edition>_<day>_<moment>_<photographer>_<number>.jpg, for exampleclimb27_d1_main-stage_jsmith_0142.jpg.
Using photos in designs
- Text over a photo sits on a Dark Brown fade (left to right, or bottom up), not a flat grey box. See "Photo fades" below for the recipes.
- Photo cards: title at the top, a line at the bottom, a Dark Brown fade top and bottom, rounded
radius-cardcorners. - Photo walls: a mosaic of squares with one big tile. Dense is better than sparse.
- Crop for the face and the gesture; leave room on one side for the headline.
- One photo per hero. No collages inside a hero, no cut-out people, no duotones that hide faces.
- Alt text describes what is happening ("A brass band playing on the main stage"), following the Voice section.
Photo fades
The fade is what makes a photo section feel like a festival: the photo fills the width, the words sit on a warm dark side, and the photo shows through on the other. Ink is Dark Brown rgb(30 15 5), orange is Climb Orange rgb(232 113 42). Layer the gradients over the photo in the order given (first on top).
| Fade | Use it for | Layers |
|---|---|---|
| Brown | Statements and story bands ("Business with a party"), with photo cards below | linear-gradient(90deg, ink 90%, ink 60% at 55%, ink 45%), then linear-gradient(180deg, ink 50%, ink 20% at 50%, ink 100%) |
| Heat | Ticket moments: a line, two buttons | linear-gradient(90deg, ink 92%, ink 70% at 45%, orange 35%), then radial-gradient(60rem 30rem at 85% 110%, orange 55%, transparent 60%), then linear-gradient(180deg, ink 35%, ink 0% at 45%, ink 70%) |
| Orange | One offer on a Climb Orange section (team tickets, a deadline) | linear-gradient(90deg, orange 97%, orange 90% at 50%, orange 50%), then a white light radial-gradient(40rem 20rem at 10% 0%, white 20%, transparent 60%) |
| Hero | The first screen | linear-gradient(180deg, ink 35%, ink 15% at 40%, ink 97%), then linear-gradient(100deg, ink 94%, ink 72% at 45%, ink 25%), then the orange glow radial-gradient(60rem 30rem at 85% 110%, orange 28%, transparent 60%) |
| Card | Photo cards with text top and bottom | linear-gradient(180deg, ink 88%, ink 55% at 30%, ink 38% at 50%, ink 94%) |
Percentages after a colour are its opacity; "at" gives the stop position.
- Words sit on the dark side. Text goes where the fade is at least 85% ink (or 90% orange), so contrast never depends on the photo. Check the darkest and the lightest part of the photo behind the words.
- End on solid. A band that runs into cards or the next dark section ends at 100% ink, so there is no seam.
- Orange fades go over things and places, never over faces: a crowd seen from behind, the stage, the trophies, the bar. Faces stay natural under a brown fade.
- On orange, the headline is white and large (24px, or 19px bold) with one Dark Brown word; the button is Dark Brown.
- Flip the direction (270deg) when the words sit on the right.
Consent and care
- The event's filming notice covers general crowd photography. Anyone in a close-up used in marketing has agreed, and anyone who asks to be removed is removed from the library and every live use.
- Honour opt-out lanyards or badges, and never photograph screens with attendee data.
- Credit the photographer where the channel allows.
Never
- Stock photos of handshakes, skylines, laptops or diverse-team-pointing-at-a-screen.
- Empty rooms, half-built stands, or rows of empty chairs.
- Photos that make the festival look like a conference: lecterns from the back, slides with no people, lanyards on a table.