[LargeFormat] All at the LF Conference?

Tue Apr 27 14:39:10 2004

One thing I feel compelled to note about the conference in Monterey:  I was
told that there were 200 people pre registered for the event.  There were
at least 100 people who just showed up.  The hotel did their best to change
session rooms at the last minute, if they could, in order to accommodate
people who "just showed up" without prior notification.  If you send out
invitations to a party at your home and receive 20 RSVPs, you plan to feed
20 people.  When 30 show up, it's a disaster for the host and the host gets
the blame.

Barbara Lowry

                    Jim Brick                                                                                   
                    <jbrick@elesys.        To:     largeformat@f32.net                                          
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                    in@f32.net                                                                                  

                    04/26/2004                                                                                  
                    09:35 PM                                                                                    
                    Please respond                                                                              
                    to largeformat                                                                              

This may show up twice. I apologize if it does. I sent it this morning and
it never appeared on the list...

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

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