I had a fantastic day there yesterday. Made it to a number of the seminars, which were properly inspriational.
This chap was a wildlife photographer - amazing work, obsessive image chasing! He spent six years on a project shooting kingfishers and is in the middle of a project on sea otters at the moment. Opened his talk with 'people romanticise wildlife photography, but in my job I'm normally cold, bored and I need a sh*t.'
http://www.charliehamiltonjames.co.uk/Dan Chung's session was great - he was talking about shooting video on the SLRs and was full of helpful ideas and tips, especially about how to get the camera moving stably - great - now I want a shoulder rig. This is Dan's site:
http://www.dslrnewsshooter.com/And then there's Philip Bloom who styles himself as a superstar filmmaker (like a superstar DJ), but was really friendly, his seminar was great and he put himself on the floor to talk to for ages. I would have gone had a burger in the place over the road with him and a few other people, but I didn't want to miss the Dan Chung session:
http://philipbloom.net/Oh and then there was the kit. Pick up and play with any of the Canon kit - 5D MKII, 7D and 1D-X - their newest unit which was f*cking huge and the auto-focus and, well, pretty much everything about it was pretty amazing.
On the gallery at one end of the hall there was a line of of cameras, on L-series lenses to try out - stuff like 400mm prime lenses which were just WOW to look through and play with.
In addition to this there were also sessions being given about how use the whole Adobe Creative Suite - picked up some very good tips from there on a number of fronts.
Plenty of trade stands around, too with some really good deals.
I know it wasn't the first year this event has been held - I will definitely be going next year and I'd recommend you do if you're into photography, too.
