The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has slated me to cover their booth at the 2011 BIO International Convention in Washington, D.C. this year. Companies from all over the world and all over the U.S. prop up booths to display their services and achievements. Think of it as an international car show, but for bio technology.
Pfizer, NIH, GE, Bayer, Dupont, Samsung, CCPIE, and other huge players were all there, trying to get new clients and extend relationships with old ones. Some companies can pretty much do it all: from making the packaging to R&D to marketing to data management/security. Along with the companies, countries and states demonstrated investment opportunities in their respective countries.
What set NIH apart was that among the hundreds and hundreds of exhibitors out there, it was the only nonprofit. Even so, it’s most popular presentations have been regarding their funding programs. Seats filled up quickly and nicely for those. Other presentations from various NIH experts were pretty cool, but in a convention where business alliances and deals are being made, money was talking.
Photographically, the convention center’s exhibition hall is your typical high industrial ceilings with your pale gym-style lighting. It’s neither green nor purple and flickers. So, when you’re motor-driving in AWB some frames are green while others are kinda purple. To prevent this, I did a custom white balance. I had a large white carpet and dull gray support beams as options. Since I was going to be shooting in JPEG, mainly to save space on my cards, I needed to nail the white balance. Shooting RAW would have made the color-corrections easy, but at ISO 1250 and 1600, my 8GB cards would fill up very quickly.
I used the 7D and three zooms of f/4 glass:
- EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM
- EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
- EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
The f/4 lenses were to save weight while still giving me the range and subject-background separation I needed. The gem lens for this venue was the 24-105mm because of it’s zoom range and little distortion on the wide end. The 70-200 was for the up-the-nose shots and the 10-22mm was to get it all in. I didn’t use my wide-angle too much because the photos got really busy with all the color from all the banners and booths.
The convention was great with all the cool booths and give away stuff. However, the best part was at the end of the convention. Booths busted out entertainment, drinks, and food. It’s definitely a great way to wrap up a long day of marketing.
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