Photokina (Part 2)

Kicking off where Photokina Part 1 left off, but with less criticism about the flamboyancy of the event, and more about the fun of it!

So as I briefly mentioned when I first got there I headed straight for the Lomography stand, I knew that Lomography were giving away free cameras to anyone who came to them with a good enough proposal for a new LomoLocation to put on their map and I had the perfect addition, The other London. When I found out about the giveaways while I was still in England I had a arts and crafts extravaganza and cut and paste my way to winning a new Colorsplash camera! After I finish my series of blogs on Photokina I'm going to do one on Lomo, coz it deserves one all to itself..

Fujifilm were also there with a both their consumer products and their professional products, I made a softcover book that they were trying to sell the new machinery to vendors and the products out of the machines to the consumers and so i took my chance to do it for free and basically how the new machinery differs to others is that you input 100 images, it uses 'smart technology' to then put the images in order and group them how it thinks they should go. I asked the woman doing it if it used the date of the photos at all but she said it didn't but I don't know how much I believe her to be honest but it did do a good job, however it did it and so I got a little booklet of Oktoberfest photos.

Next up the as I call 'Luxury' camera manufacturers were there, Leica with their giant lenses and Pro photographers doing shoots behind glass..

Hassleblad, another of the luxury camera manufacturers, had Pro Gunther Raupp using the just released at Photokina, Ferrari branded medium format camera doing a car interior workshop. On a Ferrari, of course!

Also at Photokina they had an Underwater imaging world, where you could get into a diving pool and try out the latest underwater cameras, to be honest I didn't really take too much notice of what was going on down there because, other than Fuji, I didn't recognize any of the other manufacturers names. When I think underwater, I think Olympus because I have had for the past four years one of their Shockproof, waterproof cameras which treated me very well being dropped deliberately into peoples beers at the club, smashed on the cement outside clubs and taken swimming in various chlorinated pools and salt water at the beach, and it wasn't until it got a light bump from a coffee table that it decided to stop working and I invested in a Canon D10- which I think had far superior image quality and is extremely quick compared to any of the Olympus cameras on the market that I've seen.

Panasonic were also there with new technologies including the 3d tv's and cameras. It was quite a sight seeing a bunch of people standing around with 3d glasses on. In my opinion, out of all the new technologies that I saw at Photokina that this is going to be the one which will develop and grow and eventually convert a great deal of the market into wanting to see everything in 3D.

Photokina (Part 1)

As I began talking about in my Starting at the End blog, in late September I went to Photokina, The major photography conference which brings 180,000 visitors to Cologne, Germany for 1,251 exhibitors from 45 countries to present a huge range of new products, technical innovations, and future trends to visitors from more than 160 nations. I'd like to say I represented two of those nations (being Australian but most recently working for Atlantic Photo Supply in Halifax, Canada) and with the one day ticket that i had bought to the show I tried to experience as much of it as I possibly could and I'll be sharing a bit with you over the next few blogs..

Following the many men in their black suits, I walked my way towards the conference centre, a HUGE pavilion not too far from my wonderful hostel, for day two of the conference. I followed Nikon's yellow step road and got my copy of the Photokina Daily and after being blinded by the display that Canon had put on I quickly made my way to Lomography (I'll be talking about that venture in my next blog) and along the way I began to realize a few things, the first one being what a surreal environment it was, everyone there was doing it for real, models, world famous photographers, big displays of all of the gear that they carry and revealing new products, trying to make their face be brighter than the next with the amount of space they took up, the gimmicks they had and what free samples they could give you.

Wildlife shooting anyone?

Sony, Keepin it real..

Fuji trying to convert me to their attempt to revamp instant photography. Fail!

The largest photoglobe in the planet... Not that I've ever really wanted to see one but whatever..

Me, posing in an Amy Winehouse wig for Kodak, they gave me free (TERRIBLE) instant prints of this..

Crumpler bags, with such catchy slogans as "Everytime a laptop gets dropped a baby deer dies" I have no idea why they aren't selling more laptop cases..

Some of the random fun free things that I picked up along the way..

Fallin' Beginnings

The Museum London are having a juried art show and sale and (JASS) and I'm entering in my first series I have made using my Impossible Project film called Fallin' Beginnings- I chose the title because the series consists of 9 instant photos of my first impressions of Londons Fall season and because it is my 'beginner' series with the new impossible silver shade medium.

Here are the details of the individual Instant photos.

And here is what they will look like framed

Starting at the End..

Back in June I must have caught the bus to work (meaning I stayed at the boy's house the night before) therefore missing picking up my daily copy of The Metro and so I was reading one of those magazines that the companies send to camera shops promoting their products that I usually would just think of as junky articles written by bird watchers who own cameras and that uncle who is always going to do some 'nice' photos of the family when you ask if they need any professional photography done. The thing was this magazine was actually quite good and gave details about a photography conference which was coming up later on in the year in Germany called Photokina. I went back downstairs and as it was photo-related I had a google and saw what it was all about and the dates lined up perfectly with me wanting to go to Oktoberfest.

When I got an email from the Impossible Project calling for volunteers for an exceptional soriee in Cologne (where Photokina is held bi-yearly) I was certainly excited and replied straight away hoping that I would be chosen to help out. Luckily, I was and after a great day venturing around the city (stay tuned for that one) I found the art gallery that the Impossible Project were holding their event in and after meeting the the lovely Marlene, even though I was there to help supervise with food and beverage I got to work pinning some cute little polaroid shaped pins with hearts on them through some cards telling the VERY summarized story of Impossible- "The new heart beat of analog Instant photography. Impossible manufactures fresh instant films for traditional Polaroid cameras at the original production plantinEnschede (NL). Keeping variety, tangibility and creativity alive, Impossible prevents more than 300 million perfectly functioning cameras from becoming obsolete and thus changes the world of photography"

After I got started with that I was joined by a lovely and talented girl Candace (who has also written about the experience in her blogs 'Mission Impossible Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3') and we got sent on a variety of little jobs including picking up the most amount of bread i've ever carried, cutting up 3kgs of onions- i'm still apologizing to my eyes for that one doing that in an unventilated kitchen and cutting through two wheels of cheese all the way from Holland where the Impossible plant is.

We were lucky enough to hear the speech that Florian Kaps (founder of the Impossible Project) was giving and learn the back story behind his efforts to save the instant film and cameras from distinction and learnt how impossible the whole process really seemed and it was so inspiring hearing how it has come together and how it is still evolving.

Everyone in the audience from the Asian investors to the ex art school volunteers like me were then treated to, Jan Hnizdo who, as Candace put it in her blog, is the Ansel Adams of the Polaroid world.' Using the 'Fabled' (only 7 were ever made and this was one of the ones that still exist) polaroid 20x24 camera and we saw the experiments with different lighting techniques available with this kind of machinery and the different results with the new Impossible film.

After the talk we visited the exhibition upstairs of various artists which had been trying out some of the Impossible projects films including Lia Saile who is the talented girl who makes the newsletters that we get every week who we had been chatting to throughout the day. Marlene then loaded Candace and I up with enough Impossible film to last us a good few series worth as well as a storage box and some other little goodies..

It was all a great opportunity and I met some amazing people and learnt and fell even more in love with Impossible's venture into bringing back the instant.. and so that brings me to why I started my travel stories at the end, because I am very excited to be getting more involved with anything other than digital right now. My Colorsplash or my polaroid have been what are attached at the index finger and i'm going to be entering into an art exhibit tomorrow with the impossible's i've taken... Wish me luck :)

10 From the 10th

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Heres the follow-up to my last blog with the 10 photos I took at 10pm. Similar to the 365 project but in a much shorter time span. All taken on the boy's Canon T2i.

A professor of mine once said that if the colour isn't important in the photo then why have it.. I mainly do colour photography but I think this series worked as black and whites as the colours weren't important, it was the subject matter and concept.

Self Portrait: Remembering John, The day after his 70th.

And heres an added extra, People wacking rings on fingers in Gibbons Park on 10/10/10, or just some friends out for a photography stroll.. You decide..