Photo Plus Expo Wrap-up

I’m already back from Photo Plus up in NYC (up and back in the same day), and I had a really great time. My buddy Mike McCaskey joined me for the day and we trolled the show floor looking for cool stuff.

I was fully expecting that Apple would be releasing Aperture 2.0 at the show (it’s been 2 years since the first version launched), but it was not to be. However, Apple was there with a sizeable booth presence, right up front.

Adobe’s booth was absolutely jammed (as expected), with demos of Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, and Camera Raw.

Epson’s booth was another mob scene, and they had big name photographers signing prints output on their beautiful Signature Worthy Exhibition Fiber Art paper. Everybody was there checking out the paper, and the printers.

We had a 20×20′ Kelby Training Booth where I did two sessions on Portrait Retouching, and a sneak peek at my Photoshop 7-Point System for Photoshop CS3. Peachpit had a booth nearby, and they had the first copies of the book, and then promptly sold out of their entire stock, and they were scrambling to ship some more in. By the second sessionâ”they were already gone.

I liked what I saw over at Think Tank Photo; they had these very interesting modular holster systems where you strap your lenses onto a belt you wear, rather than putting them in a camera bag. I know this isn’t new (other people make these as well), but this is the first time I’ve given it serious consideration. I probably would have bought one but their booth was so slammed packed, I couldn’t get near the gear.

Westcott was there with a really nice, good sized booth, with lights and scrims galore, and I was psyched to see one of my shots on display taken with their wonderful TD-5 Spiderlites. I bought a couple of 24″x36″ black Scrim Jim flags while I was there, and I wanted to check out all their other stuff, but I had to get back to the booth.

The Canon and Nikon booths were huge, and despite their giant size, they were absolutely slammed the entire show. Canon and Nikon both had demo’s going, and Joe McNally was showing off his D3 work over at Nikon (his stuff was just staggering), and Canon had live shoots going on.

Sony had a huge booth, but each time I went by it was kind ofâ¦wellâ¦not jumping. Nice booth though.

Lexar had a booth right up front, and there had demo sessions from people like Rick Sammon and Lynn Goldsmith, among others.

Wacom was showing off their new special edition tablets, and they were in such hot demand that you literally couldn’t buy one. My buddy Mike was dying to pick up one, and even B&H Photo was sold out of them. By the way: B&H Photo was running shuttle buses over to their flagship store three blocks away all day, and every bus I saw leaving the Javits was full.

I did a quick video interview with Scott Sheppard over at Inside Digital Photo, and that will shortly (I’ll post the link when it does).

I saw (and finally got to meet in person), Derrick Story (author, and host of the Digital Story podcast), and he was interviewing Julianne Kost in the O’Reilly booth.

I briefly checked out the Bogen Imaging booth, and knew I had to get out of there, because I wanted to buy just about everything they had. They had some beautiful Octabanks (I use an Elinchrom Ranger kit with a 7′ Octa in our studio and it just killsâ”perhaps the most beautiful strobe ever), and just loads of fun gear. It was lighting paradise.

I saw Eddie Tapp. Everybody loves Eddie Tapp. I love Eddie Tapp (ya know, like a man loves Vermont).

Overall; it was a great show, with lots of traffic, buzz, and my thanks to everybody who came by the Kelby Training Booth, who joined NAPP, and picked up the first copies of my Photoshop CS3 7-Point System. :)

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