I've spent two days at the Photo Expo in New York. When I first began attending the show, back in the 1980's, it was clearly aimed at the working professional - studio, landscape, documentary, whatever. The exhibitors were there to not only introduce their products to the photographers, but also to meet and interact with them, to build a relationship with them. Apple had a presence at the show, as did Adobe. These were the years at the birth of digital technology - manipulate images with a computer program? Display images on a computer screen? Ninety-nine percent of the photographs seen at the shows were prints made by a chemical process on a coated piece of paper.
The content of the show and the attendees have changed radically. No more Adobe or Apple, This year there was just one tripod manufacturer - Manfrotto. Very few studio lighting and/or equipment vendors. The entire show was directed towards the consumer market, and the biggest presenters were Nikon and Canon. This seemed a little out of joint to me because over the past year or so, those two manufacturers in particular have been left in the dust of the oncoming move towards smaller and lighter mirrorless cameras. The Sony and Fuji had people four or five deep at their counters, while within the Canikon sphere it was the same old same old.
I went the first day specifically to look into replacing my Drobo hard drive array with an updated version. My present one, over five years old now, was starting to make strange noises and occasionally acted a little quirky. I also wanted to upgrade because the new Drobo 5D enclosure
is USB 3/Thunderbolt compatible, which would result in much faster transfer rates between the drives and my computer. Lucky me, there was a show special of $100 off the suggested retail price, so I bought it, and spent the rest of the day poking around and looking at toys.
On the spur of the minute I decided to go in again today. Big mistake! I talked with a rep at a printing paper supplier who told me about a show special for the Canon Pro-1 printer - $500 off the usual selling price. The printer has twelve pigments, five of which are dedicated to b/w printing. I'd been thinking about that printer for two years now, and today I couldn't resist anymore. I'm very excited at the prospect of getting back into printing my images. Making a finely tuned and detailed printed image has for me always been one of the most gratifying experiences. Kind of like basking in the warm glow of having become one with a beautiful piece of music as I performed it.
Apropos of nothing I've stated above (except that I may print it) here's a shot I took this past Saturday in Manhattan.
