I usually make it out of the country at least a couple of times a year. This year been so consumed with building up the studio that I haven’t taken any significant trips. I did get out of town for the last week however. It was a welcome relief and a very productive journey.

I scheduled 4 shoots with various models and will be posting the results shortly. The premise of the shoots were simple, my assistant Maria and I would meet the model at a location somewhere in Manhattan and we would shoot as many scenes as possible in a 4 hour session. I haven’t walked so much in years. I actually lost a few pounds on the trip.

The main excuse for going to New York was to attend the PDN PhotoPlusExpo. I spent Thursday and Friday at the convention and attended a number of enlightening seminars. Stewart Cohen gave the first about producing stock film. I have a video production background and have given some thought to producing motion clips.

The second seminar was a very enlightening presentation by Michael Grecco. One of the enjoyable parts of the presentation where time lapse videos of his shoots. He has these posted on his my space page and I recommend having a look at http://www.myspace.com/michaelgrecco look for the “behind the scenes” links.

Along with the seminars there was also the trade show floor. Here there were all the latest gadgets and gizmos to drool over and wonder about. This was the part of the event that I had to careful of since my wish list is already pretty long. I was entertained and informed by the Canon booth with had a stage setup and live shoots were taking place. I had the pleasure of watching Douglas Kirkland in action. I bought his book afterwards that documents a 50-year career shooting pretty much every celebrity you can think of.