I just got home from the LF conference this weekend and, as requested, here are some thoughts:
Overall it was a great time. There are some phenomenal photographers out there. Getting to see their work and hear their thoughts was wondeful. In particular: Kerry Thalmann's and Quang-Tuan Luong's talk on backpacking with LF gear was great. I have no idea how Quang-Tuan manages to carry a 70+ pack around, it must be close to half his body weight. =-O; Dick Arentz's, Brad Hinkel's and Jan Pietrzak's presentation on alternative processes was also outstanding. Brad is doing some very cool things with ink-jet negatives, Jan gave a very informative overview of a variety of processes and Dick's Pt/Pd prints are just beautiful; Gordon Hutchings gave 7 or 8 of us a tour of the new Cooke Optics convertible lens. I WANT ONE, I WANT IT NOW, GIMMIE, GIMMIE, GIMME!
There were also a few glitches in the weekend (given that this was only the second time they've had this conference, it's hard to imagine that it would be problem free). Some of the sessions had way too many people interested in going for the size of the space allocated. People got shut out of the digital darkroom session on the first morning and there were usually people left standing in the sessions I attended. There also seemed to be the occasional disconnect between what the speakers were presenting and what the session was titled. For example, the Presenting your work to Galleries, Museums and Publications session didn't have anything to say about Galleries or Museums, but did have quite a bit to say on the history of Arizona Highways magazine... Generally the problems that did occur were minor and barely detracted from the enjoyment of the weekend. I'm sure that they'll all be worked out by the next one.
The best part of all, of course, was the trade show. That's where Jim from Midwest Photo hooked me up with a beautiful Canham woodfield and a Nikkor 400/9 to facilitate my jump from 4x5 to 8x10. Now I just need to figure out what the heck I'm going to do with these bloody, big negatives. :-)
Again, great to meet those of I was lucky enough to run into and hope to meet some more of you at the next one.
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