The Photography Show

Before Christmas last year an e-mail dropped into my inbox with an invite to register for the “Photography Show” at the NEC in Birmingham. I registered.

The Photography Show is a large exhibition of photography suppliers and organisations. A few years ago the main show was “Focus on Imaging” again held at the NEC in Birmingham.

I used to love going to the Focus shows and looked forward to them all year. That was when we used film and I had a very large wet darkroom in my High Street studio in South Wales. The exhibition would showcase all that was new in the world of professional photography. There would be at least twenty camera manufacturers from all over the world. Makers of darkroom equipment would be there demonstrating the latest print machines, processors and enlargers together with paper makers and chemical suppliers.
There would be lens manufacturers, film makers such as Fuji, Kodak, Agfa, Konica and Ilford. Producers of colour temperature meters and exposure meters and enlarger timers and print washers and film drying cabinets and an array of labour saving devices for the professional photography studio. Print trimmers, paper cutters, folder manufacturers, mount boards and mounting presses and textured print finishing machines. Print processors, rotary processors, dip and dunk film processing machines, enlarger lenses, slide film mounters, large format cameras, medium format cameras, 35mm cameras, field cameras, monorail cameras in 4×5 inch and 7×5 inch negative backs, focusing screens, dark slides and so much more equipment which also included, tripods, camera stands and a plethora of studio gear.
The show would cover Halls 9, 10 and 11 at the NEC plus there would be lectures and master-classes in the lecture halls on the opposite side of the main walk-way.
Getting there at 9 o’clock in the morning there was enough to keep you occupied all day until it was time to go home at about 4 in the afternoon. Even then you would struggle to have seen every thing in the exhibition and you would leave feeling that you had a good day and could still come back again and see more.
We used to pre-book this exhibition and the entrance was free. The parking was at a reduced rate for pre-bookers and pros. I think the parking cost about £1:50p.
It was a day worth having and the journey from South Wales to Birmingham was well worth the effort. I used to go every year.

The last time I was there was a huge shock to my system. Firstly the parking cost me £10:00 for the day. Gone were the old camera makers of Bronica, Mamiya, Pentax, Ilford, Kodak etc. etc. Only Cannon and Nikon remained. No independent lens makers and, I counted twenty seven digital wedding album manufacturers. There were frame makers all selling the same stuff that looked as if it had come off a boat from China. The exhibition was held in one hall and there were no master-classes or lectures in the lecture theatres. Only a few manufacturers’ reps giving talks on their stalls, mainly about how to use Photoshop to get a better image. Surely they should be telling people how to do the job properly in-camera in the first place.
After only an hour and a half I had seen everything and wondered why an exhibition, costing thousands to put on, could only hold my attention for a few minutes.
Ninety percent of the manufacturers and suppliers at the Photography Show could have been seen on-line in the comfort of my own home and I would have saved myself a fortune in petrol and parking fees.

Having registered for this year’s Photography Show I decided to look on their website to see a list of exhibiters. As I thought, the main area for these exhibitors is in the production of digital wedding albums. I no longer cover wedding photography and therefore I didn’t go.

I wonder what purpose this show served. It is clearly now a show for the amateur or semi-pro and seems now more concerned with wedding photography than all other genrés.

I hope that everyone who did make the journey enjoyed it and got something from it but for me the concept of a large exhibition almost totally dedicated to weddings and Photoshop is not exciting or new or innovative.

It’s a bit dull to be honest and that is something that photography should never be. It should inspire and enthral.

Long live creative, exciting and new photography.