The first time I attended many years ago was I had just entered the world of photography so I was a bit clueless as to what all the products were. I left after that day walking around saying to myself, " I really have a lot to learn before I come here again." So here I am a few years later with some experience under my belt looking forward to the expo. I bit the day meaning skipped work, took the train out of Ronkonkoma early in the morning and headed into Penn Station. For those of you who are curious, the Jacob Javitz center is walking distance from Penn Station. Just use your maps on your phone to give you walking directions to the center.
Ok, so now onto the good stuff. Upon my arrival I had my paperwork scanned, badge created and headed up the escalator. At the top was a woman handing out large plastic Nikon bags to new arrivals.
Make sure you get one of those because you will be inundated with a lot of flyers and pamphlets and I mean a lot!
At the time my arrival was about 11:30 to start the tour. Lots of ground to cover by 5pm so I thought I had plenty of time....boy was I wrong. I was so excited to talk to everyone and get all kinds of information on new products and sit for a seminar or two that by the time 4:30pm rolled around I had only seen half of the expo!
But during that time I talked with Sean Arbabi who is a commercial photographer and travel photographer and was giving a lecture about himself. He spoke of how he got into the business and gave me some good advice. He spoke of how he graduated college and sent out a thousand resumes and got no response so eventually he went to work for a commercial photographer to supplement his income in order to be able to travel and take pictures to send to vacation magazines which eventually led to a few gigs. Then he set out on his own and started his own business and became a commercial photographer. He also said one of the most important things as a photographer that we need to know is how to run the business. Taking photos is only 1/3 of what you need to know, the rest is running the business and pricing.
After speaking with Sean I wandered onto a few booths one of who was ASMP which stands for American Society of Media Photographers. I will be joining today as a student since they have student memberships and offer special services for students. Then onto another booth called Macphun who was selling an editing plugin program for Mac users only. Instead of regular chairs to sit in the both was equipped with exercise balls to sit on which I thought was fun. The speaker Ivan Randall who was giving a lecture on the program was very funny and knowledgeable of the product. He said that this program was a few steps above Photoshop and Lightroom and included some extra features that the other programs don't have and was very easy to use. Upon watching him and saw how easy it was to operate with all the additional features it included I purchased it. It cost me $129.00 and comes with 4 different editing programs. You can use it as a stand alone or plug-in. It comes on an SD card and after uploading the program you can re-use the SD card to take pictures because it is an 8GB SD card.
I know it's not the greatest photo but I just wanted to show everyone quickly what it looks like incase anyone else is interested in purchasing the program and yes they do have tech support and give a tutorial on how to use the program.
Ok, so onward into the expo I ran into a booth selling camera straps of which I was looking for a strap called the sling. I heard they make ergonomic straps for women and upon my search found one made by a company called BLACKRAPID, blackrapid.com is their address incase any women photographers out there may want the same. Only cost $54.00. They also sell sling straps for men. This strap will work for me while photographing on the bike. The other just comes off my neck in the wind and sometimes I'm afraid I will drop the camera.
At this point I looked at the time and noticed it was a little after 4pm and I have not even ventured half way through the expo yet! I was a bit upset because I still had not visited the booths I came there to see. Then my husband showed up a short while later and helped me rush through the last half but I have missed so much. I was going to return Saturday but there were family obligations so I couldn't.
I missed Scott Kelby's seminar and as I approached the Canon booth they shut off their lights. They were closed. Ugh, I was so upset.
My advice to the photographers is that you need more than one day to get thorough the entire expo. There is so much to see and so many people to talk to and products to handle that believe it or not 6 hours just is not enough time. I wish I could have returned yesterday but next year I will have to plan my time management a bit differently. Overall it was a great experience. There were vendors giving away prizes including camera bags to winning a photography tour trip to Australia and believe me I definitely entered that because photographing Australia is on my bucket list of places to photograph. Also, considering it was Halloween everyone had candy they gave away too. There were companies selling aerial photography equipment and other vendors selling very expensive view cameras. So much to see and do. I had a great experience and I am looking forward to returning next year!
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