What equipment/software do Disney photographers use?

[MSCPhotog]

I began large scale event photography in AZ shooting my daughter's small cheerleading championship events that she held twice annually. I also worked for Action Sports Int'l as a shooter for their multi-million dollar global marathon and triathlon events held worldwide. Soon I was the official photographer for Varsity's cheer events in AZ as well as the AIA state school championships back in 2002. From there I expanded to dance, acrobatic gymnastics, Western Nationals softball, NABI basketball, and a host of other national championship events. I also continued my business as a "Photo Day" shooter for various leagues and gyms (schools, Little League, Pop Warner, soccer, cheer, dance, gymnastics, etc.). I curtailed most of this by 2014 and have not kept up-to-date on the kind of equipment used today but from what I see online and occasionally attending large cheer and dance events today, it is pretty much the same as it was when I left the business. The following is a simplified but typical cheer and/or dance event set-up and process at a convention center. This set-up is the same whether we were in one large room or several: We had 3 areas of operation in one room. A sales area that comprised several banquet tables and workers, a "viewing station" area with form factor drives under the banquet tables and 17-inch monitors on top for parents to view images. The third area was comprised of 3 photographers at the performance floor or stage. In the audience area we had 3 Elinchrom 1200 monolights (aimed at different sections of the performance floor) and mounted on 22-ft Manfrotto stands. Each light was connected to an individual photographer's camera via Pocket Wizards on 3 different channels. Near the performance stage was another staff member at a small table manning a harddrive. Each photographer had small envelopes and a stack of CF cards. Each photographer used only one card for each solo or group performance. So if XYZ Cheer was performing, there would be 3 different cards for that performance. These were given to the computer operator who loaded them onto the harddrive. This "stage area harddrive" was connected by cables to the harddrives at the sales area which, in turn, were connected to the form factor drives under the tables at the viewing station area. In that same area we had two 55-inch tv screens that ran the pics of the team that had just finished performing. Excited at seeing their child on the tv screens, this immediately drew those parents to the viewing stations. We used a proprietary software program that we created where parents could easily use the monitors (mouse, no keyboard) to find a team and view all the images taken of that team's performance. They simply wrote down their personal info, the jpeg numbers, team name and performance time on the small sheet of paper, along with the size and quantity of the prints they wanted and returned it to the sales area, paid the cost and we printed onsite. No fuss, no muss. Later we added a bank of 12 touch screen iPads (13-inch) to our viewing stations. We had a total of 96 monitors and could cover any size event or multiple events throughout town at the same time. For those who wanted poster size prints with custom designed backgrounds, they were processed and sent to the customer within 10-days. We also had 1 or 2 portrait area set-ups where our photographers could take photos of the performers doing their favorite pose (scorpion, splits, jumps, toe-touches, glamour, buddy shots, etc.) which we also loaded onto the drives for the parents to view on the monitors. We also took team photos in the warm-up areas behind the stage and encourage all the teams to hire us as their official gym/studio photographers for Photo Day shoots. If the gym or studio was out-of-state too, we would contract a local photographer there to shoot their Photo Day. In any case, our tv screens made it possible for the performance and portrait images to be seen by hundreds, often several thousand, parents in the audience over a 2 or 3 day event while the monitors made it possible for them to view the photos then and their and have prints made onsite. While it would have been nice to do all this wirelessly, we found that that approach was not without it's myriad of problems depending on the venue. A typical national cheer or dance event we covered comprised anywhere from 2,000-8,000 performers. The key to success was organization, teamwork, and back-ups of virtually all equipment and an extra photographer or two. We also used 1-2 moving videographers and a stationary video camera.