Photography and aftermovies at tech summits: from Web Summit to its side events

Why should a tech brand photograph and film its presence at a summit?

Because a presence at a summit is expensive and lasts only a few days, and what makes it pay off is what gets communicated afterwards. The stand, the travel, the team and the weeks of preparation stay at the venue when the event closes; the images keep working for months.

A startup uses them in its next funding round, to show international presence and a team in action. An established company uses them in recruitment, in reports and across its sales team's social channels. And everyone needs them during the week itself, while partners, press and colleagues are posting about the event.

There is also a less measurable reason, and perhaps the most important one. A summit is one of the rare moments when a tech brand appears in public with faces: founders on stage, engineers on the stand, the team explaining the product to whoever walks past. Photography and video are how that version of the company — its best — reaches the people who were not there.

What makes covering a summit different from covering a corporate event?

The main difference is simultaneity. At a corporate event, the programme runs in one room and follows an order; at a summit, the stage, the stand, the meetings and the networking all happen at once, in different spaces — and the moment that matters to the brand rarely waits.

At Arrow Summit, which Lens Teller Pro photographed at the MEO Arena, two centres of gravity ran in parallel all day: the auditorium, with speakers and panel discussions, and the exhibition area, where partners such as Microsoft, Huawei, Red Hat and Splunk welcomed visitors. Covering one and leaving the other unrecorded was not an option. And that is the decision that weighs most when preparing any summit: how many places, at the same time, need someone there.

Light is the second challenge. Stages with screens, dark auditoriums, exhibition halls under trade-fair lighting and, at the end of the day, cocktails outdoors. At FSAS Technologies' annual event at Central Tejo, a single day had three registers — auditorium presentations, a sunset cocktail and a candlelit dinner — and the brand had to stay legible in all of them. At BMW Critical Techworks' conference at the Pavilhão Carlos Lopes, the blue-lit auditorium and the BMW fleet in the courtyard had to fit into the same selection.

The third is who the images are for. At a summit, the same coverage often serves the organiser, the brand and the partners at once: at Arrow Summit, the final selection was designed to be used both by Arrow and by the companies on the stands.

What changes during Web Summit week — and at the side events?

Web Summit turns Lisbon, for one week in November, into one of the largest technology gatherings in the world. The 2025 edition brought together 71,386 attendees from 157 countries, 2,725 exhibiting startups and 1,857 investors, according to the organisers' official figures, with artificial intelligence as the most represented sector among the startups. The 2026 edition takes place from 9 to 12 November at the MEO Arena and FIL, in Parque das Nações.

For a brand, the week has two layers. Inside the venue, its presence is shared with thousands of other companies: the stand competes for attention, the stages belong to the organisers, and the official coverage tells the story of the event, not of each brand. Outside the venue, the other half happens — the side events: dinners, investor meetings, launches, parties and networking sessions that companies host across the city.

At a side event, the brand controls everything: the venue, the guest list, the programme and the image. That is where photography and an aftermovie pay off most, because every shot belongs to the brand. But time is short — a side event lasts a few hours, in a week when guests move from one event to the next — and there is no second chance.

What holds for Web Summit holds for any tech summit or trade fair: separate what happens inside the venue from what the brand organises around it, and decide in advance where the story you want to tell actually is.

What should be captured at a tech summit?

At a summit, useful coverage is organised by space rather than by moment: the stage, the stand, the meetings, the brand across the venue and the events around it. In each one, the question is the same — which image proves what the brand wants to communicate.

On stage, the speaker with the screen and the audience in the same frame: without the screen, the photograph does not say where it was taken; without the audience, it does not prove anyone was listening. A panel discussion calls for shots that show the conversation between the speakers, not four separate portraits.

On the stand, the movement at peak hours (an empty stand at nine in the morning proves nothing), the product demo in a visitor's hands, the team explaining with badge and brand clearly visible. In meetings, encounters with clients, partners and investors — discreetly, and only when it makes sense for them to be seen.

There is one layer almost nobody asks for and that gets used most afterwards: the team's own behind-the-scenes — setting up the stand, getting ready before going on stage, the laughter at the end of day three. That material feeds employer branding and recruitment for the rest of the year. The families of photographs for a corporate event, and how to put them into a brief, are covered in the guide “What shots to ask for from a corporate event photographer?”.

Photography, video or an aftermovie: what makes sense at a summit?

At a summit, the answer is almost always photography and video, because they serve different moments. Photography serves the day itself and the months that follow — posts, press, presentations, the website. Video shows what photography cannot: the rhythm of the room, the founder's voice on stage, the energy of a packed stand.

A summit aftermovie has a job of its own: showing the brand in the middle of an event far bigger than itself and, even so, making it the protagonist. It works best when it is built on people — the founder on stage, the team talking to visitors, short soundbites from those who were there — rather than on a chronological summary of the programme. That is where the values of the people building the company come through, not just the product.

There is an in-between format that makes particular sense at a summit: short video pieces, edited during the event, to publish on the day. They do not replace the aftermovie — they feed social media while the event is still happening. What has to be decided in advance for an aftermovie to exist is explained in the guide “What is an aftermovie and when does it make sense?”.

How quickly are the images needed?

Faster than at a corporate event. During a summit, communication happens in real time: announcements made on stage, the team posting on LinkedIn, partners and press asking for images while the topic is still live. A photograph delivered a week later no longer makes it into that conversation.

The model that works is delivery in layers: a short selection on the day, or the same night, for immediate use, and the full selection afterwards, carefully edited. This has to be agreed in advance, because it changes how the team works on site — someone has to be selecting and editing while the event carries on.

It also weighs on the budget: same-day delivery means a bigger team or more hours, and it should be set out in writing — not improvised halfway through day two.

How do you prepare coverage of a multi-day summit?

With a map rather than a list. Before day one, the stage schedule is crossed with the stand schedule and the booked meetings, day by day, and priorities are set for each hour. A three-day summit rarely needs three identical days of coverage: it needs someone in the right place at the moments the brand cannot miss.

The brief should say who is who — founders, speakers, clients and investors the brand will cross paths with — and where the images will be used. That is what allows the photographer to recognise, among thousands of people, the encounter that matters.

The team is sized by the spaces active at the same time, not by the duration: if the stage and the stand are running at the same hour, someone is needed at each. And at an event that will not happen again, redundant equipment is what ensures a damaged card or a flat battery does not cost the day's main moment.

How do you choose the photography and video team for a summit?

By what it has done at summits, more than at events in general. The questions that separate a prepared team from one that will learn on site are concrete: has it covered a stage and a stand at the same time? Can it deliver on the day? Does it have photography and video in the same team?

Having photography and video in the same team has real advantages at a summit: a single preparation, a single point of contact on site and a coherent visual language across both formats, instead of two teams competing for the same angles. Compared with separate suppliers, it can also work out 10 to 20 per cent cheaper, although that is not always the case.

Many summits are produced by agencies and production companies, which subcontract the photography and video. In those cases, the team answers to two levels of expectation at once — the production company's and the end client's. That was the case in Lens Teller Pro's work for Arrow Summit, with Rewind Prod, and for FSAS Technologies, with Tonic Events.

This is the work Lens Teller Pro does: photography and aftermovies for tech summits and conferences, with the same team from the stage to the stand, the cocktail and the dinner.

How much does it cost to photograph and film a summit?

The cost of a summit depends above all on two numbers: how many days, and how many spaces at the same time. In the Portuguese market, a full day of photography typically sits between €600 and €1,200, and a full-day aftermovie between €900 and €2,000. A multi-day summit with the stage and the stand running at once multiplies the days, the team, or both.

What makes the figure vary most at a summit is same-day delivery, the number of spaces to cover at once and the video pieces produced during the event. When the summit is in another city, travel also comes into it. The market ranges, and what makes them vary, are set out in the guide “How much does corporate event photography and video cost?”.