[LargeFormat] All at the LF Conference?

[Jim Brick]

I find it difficult to mince words, so I'll tell it like I saw it...

Well, as Becky Lynn said, the LF conference seminars were a bust! But they 
always are. Over the years I have gone to dozens of photo conferences with 
seminars and 99% of the seminars have been a waste. This particular 
conference had speakers that were so full of themselves they could hardly 
contain themselves, and they managed to contradict themselves numerous 
times in their zeal. And as Becky Lynn said, most of the others were simply 
irrelevant sales pitches.

A couple of sore points with the attendees that I talked to was the fact 
that there was no microphones for the speakers so in numerous occasions, 
speakers with soft voices, could not be heard. And no remote control for 
the slide projector. So since I was sitting at the back for one session, I 
had to advance the slides on the speakers nod. This was OK except that 
standing at the noisy projector made it totally impossible for me to hear. 
But that was actually OK since the speaker's subject was a sales pitch 
mostly unrelated to the seminar title. Also, the rooms were set-up for half 
the number of seminar attendees that were there to attend. Room chaos 
seemed to be the order of the days.

BUT... The mini-trade show was a great success. What these conferences are 
good for is networking and schmoozing. Plenty of that was done by me, and 
most others, at the trade show. I got to borrow and try some equipment that 
I was lusting after. I got to talk to some really important people in the 
fine art industry, Clyde Butcher and his wife Niki being two of the most 
notable. And I got to meet and network with many other great LF photo 
industry participants.

B-U-T!!!, the greatest of all was meeting and spending time with Becky Lynn 
and Bart AhYou. Truly the best of the best. Becky Lynn says that she is a 
beginner at photography. Three years. But her web gallery shows that she 
has a real eye for photography. Great photographs! Far greater eye than I 
ever had! She wanted some help with her 4x5 so we went out to Weston Beach 
and spent a few hours photographing stuff with her Wista 4x5. I also 
introduced her to my 6x6 MF-LF camera (Hasselblad FlexBody) and she 
picked-up using it in a flash. She is a woman who knows what she is doing 
and knows where she is going. Her husband Bart (a photo-journalist) is 
right there with 200% support all of the time. These folks are going to be 
big names one of these days, mark my word! As you can obviously tell, my 
wife and I really had a g-r-e-a-t time with Becky Lynn and Bart. And we had 
never met before this conference.

So the conference was a resounding success! That's what these things are 
for. Networking, schmoozing, and building life long relationships.

In case you all have lost the URL's, here's a couple:

Becky Lynn's darkroom:

http://www.becksdarkroom.5u.com

Becky Lynn's gallery:

http://www.becksphotography.50megs.com/

Clyde and Niki Butcher:

http://www.clydebutcher.com/

:-)

Jim Brick


At 02:43 PM 4/24/2004 +0100, Clive Warren wrote:
>I guess that many of you will be heading over to Monterey for the View 
>Camera Large Format Conference. Hope you have a great time and please let 
>us know all about it on your return. Needless to say - would have liked to 
>be there myself.
>
>Cheers,
>            Clive