Visiting The Big Apple | PhotoPlus Expo | New York City
PhotoPlus Expo
Back at the end of October we had the opportunity to attend PhotoPlus. Already wondering what it is? So were we when Scott Jarvie mentioned it to us during his stay. Apparently, every year up in New York City there is a huge photo expo; which is PhotoPlus. Couldn’t have guessed by the name, right? Well, it’s more than just a fancy show for camera gear. This expo is not only full of awesome camera gear and the latest and greatest, but there’s also a lot of seminars that take place during this expo. Not to mention it’s the perfect place to network with other photographers. When Scott mentioned PhotoPlus and we discovered what it was we were drooling ready to book a hotel and spend a few days in New York, so, we did.
The “Big Apple” Experience
Don and I are both from small farm towns in Ohio, and haven’t spent a whole lot of time in big cities. We’ve lived in Delaware for 8 years, but had never made it up to NYC. We wanted to, but never made plans for it. Of course, we’ve seen all kinds of movies that take place in NYC and we’ve talked to people who have been there before. We kind of knew what to expect. As soon as we got into Manhattan, we were greeted by the great abyss of traffic. The most common sound that anyone would associate with NYC would be people honking their horns. Yes, this is completely accurate. Traffic was a nightmare. Having all that traffic and not knowing where we were going to find parking at was an experience in itself. We passed up the convention center where the expo was being held during our search for parking and had to circle back around to a parking lot we had found a few blocks away. Needless to say, that is pretty much how driving is in the city. It’s crazy, and very easy to drive farther than you need to while you’re trying to get turned around.
While we were there, we stayed at the Westin hotel; which is 9 blocks away from the convention center. We walked there from the hotel, and discovered how busy the sidewalks actually are. The hotel was right there by Times Square, so of course we went there to check it out. I think we fully experienced what everyday life would be like living downtown. I don’t think I could manage it unless I was single and didn’t have to worry about carrying groceries home for a family. Doing it myself wouldn’t be bad, but it’s a challenge to get anywhere and definitely much more effort than I’m used to. I do have to say that even though I came to that realization while I was there I still loved the city.
Networking
I mentioned earlier that PhotoPlus is a great place to network with other photographers. They actually have networking time scheduled in for everyone to mingle and get to know each other. While we weren’t able to attend the scheduled networking time, we did get to meet and hang out with Benjamin Von Wong. If you haven’t heard of him before, I recommend you go check out his work. He’s known for his fire and underwater photography. We’ve been following his work for a while now, and he is who inspired us to start doing our special effects and fine art photography. It was awesome being able to meet him and network for a while. He did a presentation for broncolor and had his friend Jeremy there model for everyone to try out the broncolor setup he talked about. We actually had a chance to use the lights in a photo you see above of the guy in armor (Jeremy). Those lights were amazing, and having a setup like that would be awesome. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the money to pour into that setup right now. Maybe one day!
Future Blogs
As you can see, it took us a long time to release this blog. We meant to get it out at the beginning of November, but I got so swamped with homework for film school along with starting the whole moving process that it took forever to get it out there. We will still be releasing blogs, but over the next few months they may be sparse until we get settled in Hawaii. There’s a lot of great things we want to share with you, but it’s just taking a while to get to everything right now. I’m on winter break from school, so hopefully I can get things caught up and let you all know what we’ve been up to in the last couple months. Keep an eye out on our blog for these cool projects we’ve been working on as well as personal posts on our progress in moving to Oahu Hawaii.