CASE STUDY

Client snapshot

Alteryx is a global data analytics company headquartered in Irvine, California. Alteryx Inspire is their annual user conference, a three-day event drawing 1,500 attendees, including C-suite leadership, customers, and employees from around the world.

Images from the event feed social media, internal communications, marketing campaigns, press coverage, and company-wide rebranding initiatives.

What triggered the project

Inspire is Alteryx's highest-visibility event of the year. The marketing team needed a photography and video partner who could cover a multi-room, multi-day conference at scale and simultaneously produce two additional deliverables: a set of high-key studio portraits for a company-wide rebrand, and professional headshots for approximately 200 employees.

With the entire global team gathered in one location for three days, it was the only practical window to get everyone photographed consistently. Three distinct deliverables. One event. Three days.

The real problem

A conference the size of Inspire doesn't have a single coverage need. It has a dozen simultaneous ones. Keynotes on the main stage. Breakout sessions in separate rooms. Award presentations. VIP moments. Networking and atmosphere across a convention center floor.

Miss any of it, and there's no recovery. The event doesn't repeat.

The rebrand portraits and employee headshots required completely different setups: controlled studio lighting, consistent framing, and a steady flow of people through the frame across all three days. That work had to happen inside the same event without disrupting the conference coverage.

What made it complex

The Venetian Convention Center is a large, multi-room environment with simultaneous programming. No single photographer can cover it. Coordinating with the in-house Alteryx events team, an outside production agency handling sound and lighting, and an assembled photography and video team, all working to the same brief, required a coverage plan confirmed before anyone arrived in Las Vegas.

Getting 200 employees through a headshot station across three conference days required scheduling built into the event program itself, not bolted on as an afterthought. Each person needed a consistent result regardless of when they came through.

The marketing team had also committed to same-day edited images for the evening session slideshows. Images from morning and afternoon sessions had to be selected, edited, and delivered while the event was still running. There was no buffer. The timeline was the deliverable.

How it was handled

Two to three planning sessions were held over Zoom in the weeks before the event, covering room assignments, priority moments, access logistics, the portrait studio setup, and the headshot station schedule. Every team member arrived knowing exactly where to be and what to capture.

Christopher Todd Studios assembled and led a coordinated team: a second photographer, a videographer, and drone coverage, all briefed to the same standard and working to a unified coverage plan alongside the Alteryx events team and Bellwether, the outside production agency managing sound and lighting.

The employee headshot station ran as a dedicated setup within the conference space. Consistent lighting, framing, and background across all 200 employees meant the full set matched regardless of which day or session an employee came through.

Throughout each day, selected and edited images were delivered to the marketing team for use in that evening's session slideshows.

The result

Approximately 2,500 delivered images across three days of coverage: keynotes, breakout sessions, awards, VIP moments, networking, branded environment, a complete set of high-key studio portraits for the company rebrand, and professional headshots for 200 employees.

Daily recap edits were in the marketing team's hands before each evening session. Final delivery landed the next day.

Images were used across social media, internal communications, marketing campaigns, press, and the company-wide rebranding initiative. The employee headshots went directly into company directories and LinkedIn profiles.