After Twitter launched, users discovered that it would nice to be able to group and filter tweets based on a particular topic. The notion of a hashtag was born. What’s a hashtag? It’s a term, preceded by the hash symbol (#), that gets placed into tweets around a certain topic. One area where hashtags are used is to tag tweets related to an event. Any sort of event with any audience that’s using Twitter will have a hashtag, and if the event is well-organized the attendees will be encouraged to use the hashtag when they tweet.
I photograph a lot of tech events where Twitter and hashtags are common. For Ignite Portland 6 the tag was #ip6. The Open Source Bridge conference used #osb09. Here’s how you can use hashtags as a photographer:
- Learn the hashtag for the event.
- When you tweet about the event, use it. Let folks know that you’re the one running around with camera(s).
- As you have a moment of downtime between shots, do a quick Twitter search for the hashtag.
That last bullet point is the key: you’re going to learn about the event through the backchannel. You might find out something interesting going on in a side room that’s not part of the main program. You might learn about a gathering (that would be a photo opportunity) that’s going to be happening later in the day. You might catch a tweet that indicates there’s something interesting to see in another part of the room.
Monitor the hashtag to gather more information, and use that information to catch photo opportunities you might have otherwise missed… but don’t spend so much time watching Twitter that you aren’t shooting the event 
Photo by waltercolor, used under Creative Commons licensing
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