I went to the Get a Grip photography conference this weekend, which was the Photography Society of New Zealand (PSNZ) Central Regional Conference for 2009; it was organised by the Hutt Camera Club. (The Central Regional Conference for 2010 is being organised by the Kapiti Coast Photographic Society, at the end of October 2010, but they don't seem to have a website for it yet. There is also the Annual Conference for 2010 (warning: requires Flash) being held in Nelson in early April 2010.)

John Doogan (Digital Cactus; Landscapes; Italy Photography) gave an entertaining keynote speech on Friday evening, illustrated with examples of how photo-collage has changed from the darkroom days to digital production. What used to take hours of planning, and an hour in the darkroom to produce a single collage now takes a few minutes in a modern photo editing tool, complete with "undo" features if an experiment doesn't quite work out. (John also ran workshop sessions on "the digital darkroom" which were apparently a good introduction to the power of (Adobe) Photoshop and (Adobe) Lightroom; he was the Adobe ambassador at the conference.)

Judi Liosatos (Judi Graphics) gave an inpsiring keynote on Saturday morning, particularly touching on everyone having pictures inside them. She has made many stunning images (several of which illustrated her talk), and ran what turned out to be the most desired workshop option -- "Wedding Photography with a Twist", a "trash the dress" fun addition to wedding photography with photographs taken (usually weeks later) out of the formal context in environments which bring out the joy and playfulness. There were about a dozen models in various (second hand) wedding dresses around for those on the workshop to pose and photograph, and many of these models were also around during other parts of the conference (so while I didn't do that workshop, I did get several photos of the models in wedding dressed in other contexts; and saw some amazing photos that were taken on the workhop).

Tony and Jenny Enderby (website) gave the keynote on Sunday morning, talking about their experiences doing dive photography over the past decade and particularly in getting things published and sent on assignment (particularly for tourism boards). Their base a few minutes from the Leigh Marine Reserve is ideal for their work. They also ran a workshop on the practical aspects of photojournalism (how to get published, what to look out for -- keep your copyright, sell single use licenses -- how to build a reputation, etc). While a lot of it was clearly related to their particular niche (dive photography) much of it could be translated into any other area when one had specialised knowledge or access.

The other workshop that I did was on macro photography, run by Simon Woolf (warning: Flash site not website). The workshop very briefly covered how to do macro photography, mostly through answers to questions that a few people asked, showed several examples of macro photography, and then sent people off to "go do it". Unfortunately it seemed to be mostly assumed that people knew how to do macro photography and were mostly there for a few hints and a chance to practise, so the workshop wasn't as useful to me as I'd hoped -- particularly since I didn't have a macro lens. (From reading through the various Wikipedia pages and Photo.net Guide, and other guides) the primary difference in a macro lens is that it can get the optics further away from sensor, to allow focusing close in. There are other options including a lens extension tube, and a "close up filter", but I didn't have those either and they do impair the optics somewhat.) The best, relatively inexpensive, macro lens option is apparently the Tamron AF 90mm F2.8 DI Lens, which is about NZ$900 and available in Canon, Nikon or Sony mounts.) I did make an attempt at some macro-like closeups within the limits of my standard/kit lenses, which gave me a chance to play with apeture priority and auto focus selection points, but I don't think I got anything particularly stunning or true macro like. (The key aim with macro lens seems to be to reach 1:1 -- something appears on the sensor at the same size as it is in true life -- which gives you a significant enlargement once you display or print out at any normal resolution.) Overall if I'd realised earlier that it would be mostly "learn by doing" and "macro lens required" I'd probably have picked a different workshop, or planned further ahead (at very least reading the tutorials before rather than after the workshop would have been useful in retrospect).

We also had a field trip option and I chose to go to the Silverstream Railway, which was right next to the conference venue. Unfortunately a change of committee members at the Silverstream Railway meant that they weren't expecting us, so not everything was quite as planned. We did get into the railway, after a short delay, and had excellent access all around the grounds to take photographs. They even made a convincing attempt at getting "steam" coming out of the steam train -- but unfortunately not actual steam power, because it takes a couple of hours to get that properly warmed up. The Railway is open to the public every weekend (Sunday 11am-4pm; $10), and the first Sunday of the month they have one of their larger steam trains active. So it would be worth a visit on a suitable Sunday.

Overall it was well worth attending. I think I got more out of the photo opportunities and being able to watch other photographers "working the scene" and overheard comments than I did out of the workshops per se. But the "hallway track" is often the most useful one at conferences anyway. And the various free/discounted photo printings look like they could easily cover much of the cost of the conference (free 8"x10", and up to 3 12"x18" matte prints for $10 each at Photo Warehouse (November 2009); 50% off one print at ImageLab before May 2010; 50 free 6"x4" prints at Harvey Norman Photo Centre before April 2010). Now to see if any of the photos I took at the conference are worth printing...