The PhotoPlus Expo officially ended on Saturday, but my experience didn’t come to an end until yesterday, with my visit to the studio of commercial photographer Andrew Matusik. My PPE experience was less frantic and more fantastic than I had anticipated.
I think this was simply because I did myself a favor and realized — before the madness began — that I should focus on quality over quantity. So my personal mantra was, “If you learn just one thing today and connect with just one person, this will be a success.” And a success it was.
I won’t try to recap my whole PPE experience — way, way too much to share — but I will give you a taste by simply listing some of the people and ideas that came my way:
The best part of PPE was spending real quality time — and enjoying good eats — with photographers I already knew, including Gail Mooney, Tom Kelly, Richard Anderson, Peter Krogh and Judy Herrmann.
I also ran into a number of other photographers I knew, including Tom Starke, Chris Hollo, Joe Pobereskin, Jeff Sedlik, Gene Mopsik, Todd Joyce, Susan Carr and Stewart Cohen. It was great to see Adobe’s Tom Hogarty and to meet PhotoMedia‘s publisher Gary Halpern.
I went to some great educational sessions and presentations, soaking up some major inspiration from some industry greats, including Harry Benson, James Nachtwey, Thomas Hoepker, James Baylog, Nigel Parry, Joel Meyerowitz, Tim Hetherington, Paula Lerner and Julieanne Kost.
Two products that I definitely want to play around with are Animoto and Blurb.
The ideas touched on by all of these image makes were varied and fascinating, and I enjoyed how they very quickly I found these ideas to sort of blended together and bounced off each other in interesting ways. Just a few of the ideas touched on were the further (and profound) evolution and convergence of still photography and video; the power of images to effect change; the difference between recording history and making it happen; advances in copyright projection; automation in all aspects of image making; fascinating approaches working with portrait subjects; the crossover between journalism and art; authorative but flexible best practices; further evolutions in RAW-based workflows; and. . . well, a whole lot more. A whole lot.
OK, I guess that actually was somewhat of a recap, if a sparce one. Couldn’t help myself. Still, I haven’t shared the best part: the stories and ideas the image makers shared. But don’t worry, I will definitely will in the coming weeks and months.
In the meantime, check out some of the links in this post. These super stars have super sites, and you’ll find a lot of inspiration.