Writing a pre-race brief for your photographers

What is a pre-race brief?

The instructions you give one photographer for one engagement. You write it from the assignment in your event admin, and they read it in their own account. It replaces the email thread that usually carries this information and gets lost.

What should I put in it?

Each field answers a question a photographer would otherwise phone you about on race morning:

• Meet location and meet time. Where and when to be there. Be specific enough that someone who has never been to your venue can find it in the dark.
• Equipment notes. Anything your course demands: a long lens for a spectator-free stretch, weather sealing for a coastal race, a step ladder for the finish arch.
• Brand restrictions. Sponsors who must be visible, competitors who must not, and any signage you do not want in frame. This is the one organizers forget and sponsors notice.
• Emergency contact name and phone. A real person reachable on race morning, not your office line.
• Upload deadline. When you need photos delivered by.
• Brief text. Everything else, in prose.

Why does the upload deadline matter so much?

Because it sets athlete expectations downstream. Photos arrive in an athlete's gallery hours after the finish, and that promise only holds if your photographers know when delivery is due. A brief with no deadline is how a gallery goes live three days late.

Set it earlier than you need it. Race-day uploads slip.

When should I write it?

Once a photographer has accepted, and at least a week out. A brief written the night before is a brief nobody reads.

Update it if anything changes. The photographer sees the current version, so editing is the correct way to communicate a change of meet point, not a separate message.

Does every photographer get the same brief?

No. A brief belongs to one engagement, so a photographer covering your finish line and one covering the 10K turnaround get different instructions. That is the point: generic briefs produce generic coverage.