One of many pearls of brilliance I came away with at BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Los Angeles this month was the LA Convention and Visitor Bureau‘s session Social Photography: A Picture is Worth a 140 Characters session. LACVB’s Director of Marketing, Bill Karz showed travel and tourism session attendees how LACVB partners with local entertainment promoters and publications to showcase local amateur photographers’ and videographers’ perspective on L.A. as seen through their own eyes.
The On Location event challenged amateur filmmakers to showcase the many attributes of Los Angeles in four minutes or less. After reviewing numerous submissions, 22 finalists premiered their films on May 21, 2011 at Sunset Gower Studios. The red carpet party unveiling the results was straight out of Hollywood, of course, but the content collected from the resulting films is gold for LACVB.
Additionally, LACVB (aka L.A. Inc) hosts an occassional phototour that lets photographers of all skill levels shoot many fantastic venues and scenic outlooks around the city on a double decker bus. Non-exclusive rights to the photos taken on the tours give the LACVB fresh, beautiful, and interesting content for their image library, and the photogs get to use their work as they see fit, too. Its a win win for all.
And check out their Photo of the Day Blog. Locals can submit images to a Flickr page, which are then voted on internally by L.A. Inc, with the daily winner posted to their Facebook Page. Since 2009 the organization has gathered nearly 20,000 very high quality, beautiful images from around Los Angeles. Everything from scenery, action, and, architecture, and the beach.
Watch this inspiring video of the red carpet party from May 2011′s On Location finalists. A montage of many of the 22 finalists’ movies, sound bytes from the filmmakers and event producers.
