Expo - Saturday Summary

The morning started off at 7:30 with Rick Ferro. Rick is a renowned portrait photographer who has worked with the Miami Dalphins made the Walt Disney World people. Rick covered a range of topics including posing, lighting, and business practices.

After Rick spoke, David Ziser introduced one of the most prolific wedding photographers in the world today. Australian born and now living in Southern California Jerry Ghionis took the platform and spoke of relational photography. 

How we interact with our brides and what our mindset is makes all the difference in how we approach our profession. Seeing the person you are photographing through the eyes of a loved one changes how we see and photograph that person.

The afternoon was left to the trade show. There one aspect of the trade show that stuck out to me were the number of processing labs with booths.

Above is the ribbon cutting by David Ziser and his group. Below Sigma made its presents known with some really big Glass. I can't say much for Canon and Nikon which both had booths but really didn't bring anything to the game. No bodies, no lenses, nada!

FJ Westcott lighting brought to the show a really unique opportunity. Using their TD-6 content lights and some really really big softboxes, they set up four shooting stations with models and all. The did this at Photoshop World and brought it into town.

Above is a group of photographs that says it all... Shooting & Chimping! Below is one go the models that were being shot. I took these with my iPhone 4s.

Here is David Ziser who originally was not going to be speaking at the Expo found himself with a Lightroom 4 Beta demo.Being the organizer it is amazing he was abel to carve out the time to present anything. He told us that he was able to get Adobe to come is as a sponsor as long as he did the demo on LR4 Beta. 

The day finished up with another seminar on creativity presented by Joel Grimes. Joel is color blind in that he can not see greens and to be able to produce the beautiful images is not only a credit to him, but the human experience. Joel shared with the group his creative process, seeing the end before you start shooting.

Well, there is a quick update on Saturdays activities. I'll update again tomorrow night.

Take care... Doug

Expo - Friday Summary

 Before I get going with todays summary of the PhotoPro Expo I wanted to put up an image I took last night before I went to bed. This was an iPhone 4s shot from my bedroom window. Post was done in an App called Perfectly Clear. The camera in that phone continues to amaze me.

Friday morning started off with Jason & Rebecca Weaver, their topic was about creating sticky customers. How and what we can do to create a relationship with our customers so the stay our customers. That seminar was held in the Marriott. Most all of the other seminars were held in the convection center. You can see what it looks like below.

Following was the marketing master planner Sarah Petty which presented her BUMP process. The session attendees learned about Branding, Understanding your numbers, Marketing, and Promotional process in managing and promoting your business.

After a break for lunch we were all wowed by the imagery of Vincent LaForet. An amazing and Pulitzer prize winning photographer we learned that the breakthrough video Reverie was his first shooting with a camera that took video. Here is the Canon link if you have not watched it.

I had not gotten very much sleep the night before and I knew if I did not want to fall asleep during one of the seminars I needed a nap. After about an hour of Vincent's look at this wonderful image I have created, I snuck back to my room and took a good nap. When I returned, he was still going at it. They were dazzling images and very inspiring but my sleep deprivation needed attention.

After Vincent LaForet was done, Lindsay Adler came on stage for her presentation.

Lindsay is a New York Fashion photographer and was presenting her work and motivating the attendees to consider a fashion flair in their portrait and wedding photography as an option to provide to their clients.

The day was really getting long and yo could see it in the crowd. The final speaker of the night was Kirk Vuclain. All I will say is the following image explains the rest of the evening,

Kirk was a hoot with plenty of takeaway information. Probably the most entertaining of the entire expo. His message was to make your studio the coolest one in town.

That is going to do it for tonight. Cya... Doug

Expo - Thursday Summary

I found where the photo competition was being held in our hotel and I enter this dimly lit room. A number of people are sitting in the from of the room looking at an image somewhere has entered in the competition. The room is as quiet as a mortuary at a viewing. Suddenly one of the judges calls out a number there starts justifying why that chose that particular number. These end up ranking the image in the competition. They would spend ten minutes on one picture with the photographer describing the emotional connection (or not) they they were trying to express when the captured the photo. Enough for me, I was outta there. I was going back to the room and catch up on some stuff when I ran into the man himself, David Ziser. As he saw me come out of the competition room, I asked home where all he excitement was. David directed me to the second floor.

 This is where stuff was happening. This image was taken a little later as you can see Ziser across the image getting a shot of the group. So take a group of photographers in a hotel they do not have to drive away from, add some beer and wine with a scoring competition and what do you have. A secondary competition only for cash. People would pay $10 to get a dry-erase card to put their name on and when the image was brought up on screen (from the actual competition) people would write down the number they though the judges would score the image. After ten images the one who got the most correct guesses won half the pot. The other half went to the association. It kind of reminded me of the movie Rat Race when all the old gamblers were in the hotel suite betting on wich of the five or so hotel employees hanging from the curtain rods would last the longest. It was fun to watch.

Here is a zoomed shot of David Ziser on the other side of the room. These were taken with my iPhone 4s and run through an app called Perfectly Clear but are still a little noisy as the light was low in the room. 

Tomorrow we start out bright and early at 7:00 so it is off to bed.


Cya... Doug

Expo - Arrival

Today was real a day to get here and get settled. There is a seminar this evening but the real learning starts tomarrow.

I arrived in Cincinnati this morning to attend the PhotoPro Expo 2012. I am super excited as this is my first foray into photoaphic conventionering. I have been to a number of aviation conventions and there is always so much to see in such a compressed timeframe. 

Exiting the airplanes presented a striking image of the economy in this area as seen below.

 When the economy tanked, ComAir had been one of the largest regional airlines in the country meriting their own terminal in Cincinnati. The had been bought out by Delta Airlines while Delta was using CVG as an international hub. Post economic crash, the ComAir terminal was closed and was incorporated into the main terminal.

Enter the Northwest/Delta merger. There goes the international hub. Detroit was already serving that capacity. If the lack of people in the terminal at 10:30 on a Thursday morning does not make it clear, the image below brings even more clarity.

I was able to get a room at the Marriott which was the convention hotel and the one that was directly connected to the Greater Northern Kentucky Convention Center. This was the view I was given from my 12th floor room of the downtown Cincinnati waterfront. 

Once I get going with the various seminars it will be non-stop action here is the line-up for my next few days. 

Thursday 

   7:30-10:00 PM for Youth Sports with John Pittman and Jim Seers

Friday

   7:30-9:00     Client Relations with Rebecca and Jason Weaver

   9:30-12:30   Marketing withnSara Petty

   1:30-2:00     Lightroom 4 Preview with David Ziser

   2:00-5:00     Future of Photography with Vincent Laforet

   5:00-7:00     Fashion with Lindsay Adler

   8:30-11:00   Cool Studio with Kirk Voclaim

Saturday

   7:30-9:00     Lighting with Rick Ferro

   9:30-12:30   Style with Jerry Ghionis

   12:30-4:00   Trade Show

   4:00-6:30     Artistic with Joel Grimes

Sunday

   7:00-8:30      Speedlight with Syl Arena

   9:00-12:00    Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It with Scott Kelby

   12:00-4:00    Trade Show

   4:00-6:30      Surviving with Skip Cohen

I'll have more later... Doug

A Timely Christmas Gift

This all started this past Christmas. Admittedly I am a very hard person to get Christmas presents for. Generally if I have a need and the money is available I will purchase the item. So this past Christmas I was the only one in our family that got absolutely nothing and I was fine with that as I had so much fun seeing the joy on others faces as they opened their gifts.

So in early January, my dear wife suggested I go to this photography she in Cincinnati. This was a shock to me as I have never considered asking her if I can go to these events as I am already away from home so much. I must have been surprised as my reaction did not impress upon her how much I would enjoy this as she asked if I really liked it. The significance of this gift of time has sunk in even further as the Expo approaches.

The next few days I will have some posts regarding the Show and Expo.

Take care all... Doug

A New Blogger Day

So it has been a little while since I posted last. I really had not planned on taking such long break from blogging but I must say it has been an enjoyable break. Call it writers block or possibly bloggers block but it Swanee like I was running out of material to talk about. What was actually happening was I just burned out on posting every day. It started out as a short break which grew into longer and more frequent breaks. Kind of like a addiction only backwards.
So what have we been up to at PeekFoto? We have been shooting but with the church directory project sucking up much of my time in town and December being... Well, December, all the activities created a big time vacuum. Not that what we did was not a lot of fun brut it was not shall I say photographically productive.
Here is one image I will share of a young lady.


This was shot on a white seamless with two Alien Bees 800's getting the background to go white and used a pair of Elenchroms To provide main and fill light. Post was in Lightroom with a trip to Photoshop to jazz it up.
Here the same setup only with this father daughter pose.



That is going to do it for today.

Cya later... Doug

Work-Work-Work

My normal life as a pilot is usually much airline riding chasing pilots to observe their performance on a ferry flight (one with no passengers). I occasionally act as a crewmember on regular revenue flying. This pas week was one such week.

Normally I have quite a bit of down time to edit images that I may have shot the week previous to my flight schedule. I left for this past weeks tour with two goals in mind. Those being to edit and post a senior shoot and finalize the church directory images and get them ready to be burned to a DVD. Well... That didn't happen, but I did fly over 11,000 miles in the five days of flying shown above.

It was good to get out there and hone my skills in the rapid fire environment of line flying but disappointed I was unable to meet my commitments on the photo end of things. I will have to fix that on Monday back at the office. Needless to say, my blogging fell off the edge of the earth with that schedule.

Cya later... Doug

Migration is Complete

Ag least the major portion of the migration from the iMac 24 to the 27 inch model. Ill have an update on that whole fiasco probably on Monday or Tuesday. Suffice it to say, I am now running on the new machine.

Did a shoot on Thursday evening and am in the middle of a personal project which I'll get into later so other than that I am just finishing up a little Christmas shopping. I did find this on a friends Facebook post and chased it down on YouTube so I could imbed it here in the blog. If you are a fan of the movie Despicable Me you will really like it and if you have not you need to rent is and have a laugh.

Hope you enjoyed it. Have a great weekend and I'll cya Monday... DOug