‘Focus on Imaging’
On Tuesday I ventured north to the National Exhibition Center (NEC) near Birmingham to attend the annual ‘Focus on Imaging’ event. ‘Focus’ as it’s generally referred to is Europe’s biggest annual imaging show, and covers all your needs from image capture through to output and beyond. Whether you are a professional photographer, image maker or processor, a manufacturer or distributor of products or a keen hobbyist, there is something there for everyone and in fact there were well over 200 exhibitors present. Excellent opportunity and temptation to spend lots of money if you wanted to (or if you had it!).
As well as a trade show there are also a number software demonstrations going on from the likes of Adobe, OnOne and Corel etc as well as talks and demonstrations from a number of professional photographers, including wedding photography, portrait photography, commercial photography and landscape and wildlife photography.
I personally enjoyed a number of lectures / demonstrations,
Trevor & Faye Yerbury – Renowned wedding and portrait photographers based in Scotland but who photograph wedding all over the country. They gave an excellent talk and demonstration on studio based portrait photography using only one light and a reflector to produce some brilliant results. Web address http://www.yerburyweddings.co.uk/
Chris Burfoot – Chris is another wedding and portrait photographer but based at the opposite end of the country in Wiltshire. Chris is also well known for running a number of photographic courses for The Flash centre (TFC). He also runs courses for The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and The Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP). On the particular occasion that I saw him Chris was giving a practical demonstration using different printed photographic backgrounds. In particular he had one which contained an image of a brick wall and another a corrugated metal shed / fence. The results were excellent, although photographed in a studio both looked as they could have been taken on location. Chris’s web address is http://www.pembrokephoto.co.uk/
Bjorn Thomassen – Bjorn, who heralds from Cornwall, has won many prestigious awards for his photography, in a diversity of subjects from Commercial to Wedding photography and Contemporary Portraiture including Fine Art. He also holds a Fellowship in Illustrative Photography. Bjorn gave a number of different seminars but during the one I attended he was exhibiting some of his own images and discussing the why and how he came to take them, explaining some of the detailed planning involved and how all of the elements came together to produce the final image. Some his wedding photography is absolutely stunning and I would definitely recommend a visit to his web site, http://www.bjornthomassen.com/
David Noton – Although I am primarily a wedding and portrait photographer I also enjoy other aspects of photography and in particular ‘Landscape’ David Noton is one of my favorite landscape photographers and he also was talking at Focus this year.
David is an award winning landscape and travel photographer with over 24 years experience as a professional under his belt. During his photographic career he has travelled to just about every corner of the Globe and his pictures are now published all over the world. He also writes for a number of magazines and websites including, Practical Photography magazine, Outdoor Photography, Digital Photo Pro and www.photographyblog.com where he has a monthly online column.
At Focus he presented a slide show and then gave a commentary / talk about where the pictures were taken and how they were obtained. As you would expect the images were simply stunning, I would definitely recommend a visit to his site, http://davidnoton.com/
There were lots of other speakers and demonstrations there too but these were just some of my favorites. As well as the trade show and seminars etc there was also an opportunity to photograph a number of models posing in different studio style settings. I have included a few of my shots below – if for no other reason than to give this blog entry a visual reference, also I think they look good, see what you think…
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