Blog Post #77

Exhibitions and other stuff

The Photography and Video Show - NEC Birmingham

With the annual Photography and Video Show back in its normal springtime slot, I decided to pop along and see if anything took my fancy. As a predominantly street and documentary style photographer I don’t really need a lot of kit. No need for tripods, filters, flash and the like. I was however interested to see if there would be any new zine and book manufacturers there and whether there were any good pickings from the second hand camera stall run by The Disabled Photographers Society. Apart from that it was just a peruse of what is new and how the industry was trending.

This year I decided to ravel by train as the car parking is now a ridiculous £18 and there is a lot of disruption on the M42 with a new exit being added to serve the NEC. I headed off from Derby towards Birmingham New Street station where I was to get my connection to Birmingham International for the NEC. My first train was 10 minutes late and my booked second train cancelled. Thankfully trains to the NEC are about every 10 minutes so I arrived in good time.

The show in my opinion is great if you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you planned to make purchases. It was just like the previous shows I had attended and I didn’t really get inspired by anything I saw. There were a few book manufacturers and although they look great, people these days are not willing to spend £30-40 on a book by an unknown photographer. That is where the low cost of zines wins, but nobody I saw was offering zine printing services. I did visit the second hand camera stand but there wasn’t much left (I visited on the third day of the event), apart from cases, lenses and various other tat interesting items. Whilst I was looking at some vintage cameras that had caught my eye, a guy leaned across and said “I will take those five and that one there”. Having hoovered these up no doubt they will be on sale this week in his antique shop at inflated prices. I picked up loads of leaflets and I am still going through them so if I come across anything interesting I will mention it in my next blog. I met up with Brian Lloyd Duckett and his son Alex on the “StreetSnappers” stand. I am part of the “StreetSnappers” photography collective so it was good to have a chat and catch up.

Although I had my Fuji X-100F in my shoulder bag, I don’t take my camera to the event to take photos there. I never cease to be amazed by those who walk around with bulky DSLRs with huge lenses on them. What do they plan to do with them? Anything that I am interested in I snap with my iPhone but that seems to be kit or website details QR codes etc. A number of the stands, particularly those selling studio lighting, provide models for people to photograph. These tend to attract the snappers, voyeurs and all sorts, especially if it is a scantily clad young lady.

I learned whilst at the show that it was going to be at an event location in London next year then back to Birmingham the following year, rotating thereafter. Will I go to the London event next year? Probably, but I hope there is a bit more to interest me. I like the smaller stands with specialist products but it will interesting to see if they can afford to attend at London rates for stands and accommodation etc.

FORMAT24 Festival of Photography - Derby

Since I live in Derby it would be remiss of me not to attend the city’s own photography event, FORMAT24. It is held every year and in the past I have been underwhelmed by what was organised over the period of the event. This year I once again failed to be impressed, having been emailed regularly on what was coming. Last Saturday I went to FORMAT24 headquarters at The Quad in Derby market place. When I arrived there were only a couple of visitors milling around. I went into the “marketplace” room which consisted of a few zine sellers and someone selling second hand cameras who was not set up yet. Another stall was not opening until the afternoon. I then proceeded to the first exhibition room which was empty of visitors and nothing on the walls really held my attention. In the adjacent room there was an exhibition entitled “Jubilee City - Derby Punk in the 70s”. This was a display incorporating ephemera and documents arising from a call-out to individuals who were active on Derby’s punk scene between 1976 – 1979. I found this interesting. There was one more wall upstairs with some photos on it, not really worth the climb to the first floor in my opinion. All in all I didn’t get the “Festival” feeling. Little to see and not a lot to interest me. There may be others that found it wonderful but not for me.

Welcome to the Global Camera Club

Over the last few weeks the world has gone mad and become one big camera club, especially in the UK. I am of course talking about the edited image released by The Princess of Wales on Mother’s Day. In the space of about 48 hours the photo went from “Awww!” to “Kill it!” by the picture agencies and the press. Everyone suddenly became a camera club judge looking for forensic evidence that something was afoot. Never has the term Photoshop been used so often by the world’s media and others, something I am sure Adobe didn’t object to even though it could have been edited on any number of editing software packages. I would say that 99% of photographs these days have some form of editing applied to them whether it be automatic in-camera/phone technology or a simple crop or exposure change or the application of stupid filters. Serious photographers could really go to town to enhance an image but was it Photoshop? Some of the highlighted “faults” look to me as a result of offsets that can be caused by scanning where registration slips. Photoshop tends to stack images directly on top of each other, not offset them. I could be wrong as I am not a Photoshop expert. Either way it is a whole lot of fuss over nothing and I believe it to be a distraction from the more serious things happening in our country today. Don’t get me started!

EDIT: since I have written this blog the news broke about The Princess of Wales’s condition. The news proves that things like being picky over photos pales into insignificance when dealing with a personal and serious medical condition. Lets hope people get things into perspective now and that she can recover in peace..

I hope you have enjoyed this blog post and thank you for reading it. If you want to comment on this blog post please do so below or you can contact me by using the “Contact Me” facility in the website header.

Pete