Photographers' Fanfaire - Portland

The Photographers' Fanfaire by PPF in Portland this weekend was excellent. Some of the highlights for me included the following:

Panel discussion on collecting photography and books. This was done by Gerald Robinson, Stu Levy, and Jennifer Stoots. Main message: don't expect to make money collecting photographs. Collect because you love photographs and photography. While the photographs can rise in value, the costs involved in insurance, controlled storage, and selling usually overtake possible profits.

Ray Bidegain's positive experiences selling pt/pd on EBay.

Discussion of copyright legalities by Leanard DuBoff and Burt Krages. Both have written books on the legal aspects of photography. For example, the orphan works legislation is dead this year but could come up again. (Watch out for this one, and write your senator if it resurfaces!)

Martha Casanave gave a presentation on her lensless photography, pinhole and photograms that I liked. A lot of her photographs have kind of a mysterious look to them that makes them appealing.

Jerry Wolfe's presentation on his macro-color photographs of flowers. This was a beautiful display of color. He also takes photographs through various crystaline sheets of rocks and get's an interesting effect.

Janis Misglav's presentation on the Africa's Undiscovered Myths. He lives with different African tribes for a few weeks out of the year and attempts to render their dreams and myths that they describe to him as photographic images.

Many people brought their photographs for display. A stand-out for me was John Wimberly's special edition photographs. These are some of his best black and white images printed on 8x10 paper and initialed by the photographer. These images were drop-dead gorgeous. His cloud photos rule. No one I've seen does it better. He usually photographs in 5x7, so he has plenty of negative with which to work.

There were many other good things going on and presentations in this event.

It sounds like we'll have another fanfaire next year. (Hopefully.) I'll tell you, the price was reasonable. It was $15 on each of Friday and Saturday and free on Sunday. Paqrticipating in the raffle was $5.