Above: taken by Jeff Greene.
I have just got back from an exhausting week of work at Cologne’s humongous biennial photography trade show. At Photokina I did occupied two presentation slots a day at the Microsoft booth, throughout the six days of the event.
Within minutes of acquainting myself with the theatre and booth space, I could tell this would be different from the setup at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit. Rather than a contained space with captive viewers, the trade show environment offers freedom for visitors as they pass through and decide how long to watch any particular thing. As a result, the more visual and active presentations work best.
Above: Rehearsal day. Taken by Jeff Greene.
‘Creativity meets efficiency: The art of the digital workflow’
My role was to present two Microsoft imaging programs from my own perspective as a fine art photographer.
First I gave some Flickr background of the story of ‘Miss Aniela’, and then, showing a range of my work throughout the 30 min talk, went on to discuss the programs Expression Media 2 and Capture One Pro. Expression Media is an asset management tool whilst Capture One is a RAW workflow program which may just have the best RAW conversion available. I talked about these two programs in connection with my work, my progress on Flickr, and crucially the elements of control and efficiency digital photographic products like the aforementioned two are offering; in being able to save time and money in producing work both for one’s fine art portfolio (as a self portrait photographer) and in work for clients. For example, I discussed how the two programs have user-friendly visual interfaces, make metadata templates a standard, and are geared for easy communication in the form of web contact sheets and slideshow functions.
Capture One is an essential tool for anyone shooting RAW and also offers tethered shooting, whilst Expression Media is a program for everyone: for both the pro wanting to catalog exhibition prints, to the everyday computer user who has a bunch of loitering snapshots, spreadsheets or word files, etc, on his/her computer.
I showed how these two programs fit into one’s current workflow (for example, I have always used a lot of Photoshop. I made it clear that Photoshop is a crucial part of my process and that as an artist I want products that will fit in within that process, not try and replace it).
Screengrabs of my work in use in these programs featured throughout the second half of the presentation:
Above: taken by Jeff Greene.
I met some great people there at the Microsoft booth where I was working, and also had time to browse more of the fair in my spare hours and check out exactly how vast it was. Everyone from across the spectrum of the photographic/imaging industry were there, from cameras to printer paper to Joby Gorilla tripods. There was also chance to sample fine German cuisine, from sausages to …sausages. And some strudel.
Some more pics:
Above: Nic Fillingham from Channel 10 in action
Above: Garry Stretch from Grimsby… who modelled for demos of photoshoot tethering on Capture One Pro
Above: rather randomly, the Dom cathedral.
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