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Robert Leslie Mark Garfinkel Katharina Hesse Peter Bennett Roy Feldman Aric Mayer EVE Jose Goitia Frank Micelotta

Noted UK Photographer Robert Leslie Uses Digital Railroad Technology to Bring Cannes Film Festival Images to Market Instantly

Digital Railroad member Robert Leslie was an official, accredited press photographer for the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. This is his 9th year covering the event for various clients, including Italian Vanity Fair.

Using Digital Railroad technology, Robert made his images available to his clients in real-time. He uploaded about 800 images to his Digitalrailroad.net archive during the festival; about 80% of those went straight into Marketplace.

Once I’d made my selects, corrected and cropped, the upload to Digitalrailroad.net was really fast — I use Aperture — the Digitalrailroad.net plug-in is fantastic! Once it is engaged in uploading a file, I can get to work on another selection in Aperture — a great feature!

Leslie worked 18 hours a day covering photo calls, parties, and premieres at the official Palais venue and exclusive events at the Martinez hotel, where he had special access. Although the film festival might seem glamorous and glitzy for those on the outside, a typical day for Robert at Cannes looks like this:

10 am	Run to the Palais for the first photo call.
11 am	Work in the press center to edit first shoot and any remaining material from the previous evening.
1 pm	Stop by the HP beach, check email, get prints made for special VIP clients, eat.
2 pm	Back to the Palais for second photo call.
3 pm	To Martinez hotel, shooting smaller photo calls en route. Work at Martinez editing and transmitting.
5 pm	Home to change, shower.
5:30 pm	Back at Martinez hotel to photograph VIP departures. The arrival of all the limos is very specifically choreographed. The hotel is the base for L’Oreal & most of the fashion houses — Versace, Cavalli, etc. — so it is possible to shoot their VIPs.
6:45 pm	Run to the Palais for the Red Carpet arrivals.
7:30 pm	To press center to edit & transmit. Thinking about eating, but no time as...
9:30 pm	Departures down the red carpet. This year’s exit of Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie was by far the most “out of control” situation I have ever seen on the red carpet. I got a pretty good sequence from that moment of 400 photographers held back by 20 guards, protecting around 2 people.
10 pm	Red Carpet arrivals for next film.
10:30 pm	Try to eat.
12 am	Departure of actors from previous film or arrival for the midnight screening.
1 am	Back to Martinez. Editing until 4 am.
4 am	Back home. Plug in all batteries — camera, AA, flash, computer, mobile phone — hope the local garbage collection doesn’t start at 8 am.

Outcome: With Robert’s Cannes images available in Marketplace, Digital Railroad sales and marketing staff notified qualified photo buyers about Robert’s images via email campaign, photo blogs on Digitalrailroad.net, and outbound sales calls. This image is one of the images licensed by a major book publisher.