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PhotoPlus Expo 2012: Second Day Impressions from the Show Floor

Digital Silver Imaging’s Eric Luden holding a mounted print on Dibond to demonstrate how they can attach a brace to the back of a mounted print for easy and secure hanging on a wall. One of the main reasons I go to the PhotoPlus Expo is to see things like this.  

My second day at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York City on Friday, 10/26 was, like the first day, filled with photo-related goodness at every turn. Below is a list of more booths that I highly recommend stopping by if you are planning to visit the show. If you can’t make it to the show, or if you are not visiting today, I’ve linked each company’s name to its website so that you can find out more about each company. There are, of course, many more great products and services on the show floor, and I will be adding content from the show in the upcoming weeks.

1. Canon: Canon’s booth at the show is always big, but this year, it’s MASSIVE. The gallery has outstanding print samples from various Canon printers, the demo areas allow you to test Canon gear, and the Expo Stage is always a fantastic place to learn from Pros who specialize in both stills and video. Just to give you some idea of how much you can learn on the show floor, I’ve inserted Canon’s Expo Stage schedule below:

2. Squarespace: Squarespace built an amazing booth inside of a black box on the show floor. You can speak with one of their reps and learn about many of the features available in it’s two plans. I was blown away by the quality of the newest templates that are available inside the system. They make it extremely simple for photographers and other artists to make a great-looking website, and the cost for one of the plans is just $8/month. They also have a 10% off coupon code printed on the small notebooks that they are giving out on the center table inside the demo area.

3. Synology: This company specializes in NAS  (Network Attached Storage) enclosures, and their products are very impressive. They showed a small unit about the size of a softball that can hold four “laptop” or SSD 2.5-inch drives, as well as a larger enclosure that can hold 8 laptop, SSD or 5.25-inch drives (the larger enclosure is expandable to 16 drives total).

4. Gura Gear: GuraGear makes camera bags with many features that set them apart from the competition. The split design, and unique handles are just two of the things that impressed me.

5. Digital Silver Imaging: This company, based in Massachusetts, does incredible printmaking for clients around the world. One of the things that sets them apart from others is that they can take a digital file and make real photo-based fiber and RC black and white and toned prints. They also print color or black and white using pigment inkjet printers, and they do mounting to materials like Dibond and aluminum.

Below are five companies who make plug-ins to help extend the functionality of Lightroom, Photoshop and other applications. Some also make phone and/or tablet apps that should definitely be seen. Each has a great booth with live demos worth stopping by to see. You can learn tips and tricks from people who know the software inside and out:

6. Nik Software 

7. OnOne Software

8. Athentech Imaging

9. Topaz Labs

10. Datacolor: Datacolor has many products made to help photographers get sharper images from their lenses and better color/consistent screen matches and prints. The company’s small but extremely useful SpyderCUBE is one of my favorite products for helping to get more accurate color in-camera under different lighting conditions. I highly recommend getting a demo of the products that you might want to add to your workflow.

11. Midwest Photo Exchange: This is a candy store for photographers inside of a larger candy store! Midwest Photo is a retailer who sells an amazing array of equipment during the show. You can demo gear and ask questions about the products they sell. They also have a stage with live presentations on each day.

12. Lowepro: Lowepro has an amazing selection of camera bags and related gear at the show, and they definitely encourage you to play with the many products on the show floor.

And below are five book and DVD/online content publishers who always have great titles to browse through:

13. Course Technology PTR/Cengage Learning

14. Focal Press

15. Peachpit

16. Rocky Nook

17. PhotoshopCAFE

18. Pexagon Technology: (Their booth graphics say “PhotoFlashDrives.com”): This company has a very large booth in the back of the exhibit hall. They do amazing laser engraving on photo boxes, flash drives, etc. They also have some very simple but elegant new paper folders in both black and white that can be used to hold prints.

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AfterCapture Magazine Featuring Digital Imaging Contest Winners Available Free for Download

A few days ago I had a chance to read through the newest edition of AfterCapture magazine. I was extremely impressed by the overall content and the many fantastic before and after images from their 2012 AfterCapture Digital Imaging Contest, sponsored by Wacom. It’s rare to have an opportunity to see how photographs go from “Raw” to a finished image, and I found the issue very inspiring. If you do any post-processing of your images, I highly recommend taking a look. It’s free to view online from this page.

 

 

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Facebook Improves Timeline Post Viewing on Facebook Pages

I woke up this morning, posted something to my Facebook Business Page, and was happily surprised. After expressing my thoughts on Facebook and some blogs about a little blue box that would “hide” recent content on my Page (see screen shot below), all of my recent posts and images that I now see on my Page are lining up nicely, and all older stories are loading nicely as I scroll down the page. Hooray! This is just my observation and your milage may vary. However, I checked a few other Business Pages and they appear to have the same updates and functionality.

This is a screen shot of my original post that expressed my thoughts on the old Facebook Page format:

This is important to me (and I would guess many others), because it was so easy to just skip over that little blue box, thus missing out on many stories, links, etc. from the recent past. In essence, the old approach made me feel as though I was wasting my time sharing information about which I was passionate.

Thanks Facebook. I’d like to think I was part of this decision, but it really doesn’t matter who gets credit for it (maybe Mark Zuckerberg has me on his “must read list.”) This may just inspire me to upgrade my personal page to the Timeline format. But wait, I may not have a choice, as per this Techcrunch article.

If you’d like to see what I’m seeing now on Facebook Fan/Business pages, feel free to visit my Page. My Facebook Photo and Printing Tips Page has over 1000 posts on the topics of Photo and Printing Tips, links to images that impress me, photos from events I attend, and more. You can find it here: https://facebook.com/andrewdarlow.

And if you’d like to receive 12 tips from my book, 301 Inkjet Tips and Techniques over the next 12 weeks, plus updates and information about workshops, exhibitions and more, sign up to receive my free newsletter below: