I signed up for the convention this year. Last year I went as part of EPIC and got my forensic training. I decided that for this year I really wanted to take more of the posing and retouching classes. The way that IUSA is set up is that they have classes in different "tracks". These tracks allow you to easily pick which courses would be best for you. Shoot sports and events, take the classes that are in the SEPCON track. Need help with retouching? Take the classes listed in the Retouching track.

The cool thing is that, with the exception of EPIC track, you can swap. So I took some classes in the portrait track and some in the retouching track and several in the business track. EPIC is different because you have to pay a different fee to attend those classes, so when you since up through EPIC you tend to take only those classes since everything overlaps.

I signed up as soon as the dates were announced. Tickets ran about $219 but you can't purchase a single ticket. You have to purchase a "Buddy Pass". So you pay for it and the "Buddy" comes along free.  A lot of people sell off the Buddy part for 1/2 the cost of the ticket. I understand how this discount is probably useful to big studios who have several people attending, but I'm a one woman show. To me it just meant that I was paying twice the price for no good reason. The funny part was all the times they boasted that they had record numbers of attendees at this event. Of course they did, who really wanted to pay double for a single ticket. If they don't offer single tickets year then I may just skip the event all together.

In addition to this odd pricing system they decided to add on several days pre-event with various workshops and classes. By the time this news was announced I already had my plane tickets purchased. Not only would I have to pay anywhere from $300 to $600 to sign up for these additional classes, I would also have to pay the airline a change fee for my tickets. I elected to just not go to the pre-event stuff.

Now that you know the background here's how the trip went.

I was supposed to fly out of TFG on Sat around 8 am. 2 weeks prior to my flight US Airways emailed me to tell me that they changed my flight to 6:25. I have a 45 minute drive to the airport plus having to check in and get through security. I was torked but what can you do? Besides never fly with them again?

It was a short flight to Charlotte where, because of the schedule change that US Air felt they had to make, I had a 4 hour layover. Then I had the flight from hell. 4 hours to Phoenix. I don't know if you realize this but the airlines are desperate. They now charge if you check luggage, they charge for food (which is rarely offered on the flights), and they now charge for drinks. $2 for a 12 can, yes a can, of coke.

I thought ahead and purchased a bottle of soda from the newstand and a bagel sandwhich that I could take on the plane with me. What I hadn't counted on was their new marketing scheme. Keep the cabin excessively hot so that people will be desparte and purchase drinks. I passed out at least once on that flight, not that anybody noticed, from heat exhaustion. They probably assumed I was asleep. To top it off company policy is to not give customers ice if they don't purchase a drink. I must have gone into the bathroom 8 or 10 times that trip just to run the cold water on my hands and face.

I was such a mess getting off the plane that I looked like had helped myself to the entire stock of alcohol available. I came off, sat down on the floor and pressed my head against a column until I was finally cooled down enough to walk to the terminal and look for my hotel shuttle. I was there about 1/2 hour or so. Not one employee asked if I was ok. No one asked. It's a sad state in this country that when someone is that bad off that not one person notices.

I made it to the shuttle and arrived in my room. The hotel was the Springhill Suites in Phoenix on Van Buren. These guys rock. Check in was simple, the room was huge. I booked a queen bed room and ended up with a mini suite. I had a fold out couch and a desk area. even a kitchenette (microwave and fridge). I was sooo happy to be in my room. Even though it was only about 60 degrees outside my clothese were still sticking to me from the 80 degrees they kept the plane at.

The one downside to the hotel is that there is no transportation. Phoenix installed a lightrail system but it's only on the opposite side of the convention center from my hotel. So I had to walk the 4 blocks everyday to and from the convention center. It's not a bad walk, streets are clean, I feel safe. But you get a lot of paperwork and handouts and crap from the vendors so you end up walking back each night with a bag loaded with papers. There's a "food block" also about 4 blocks away but most things close up at 10pm and it requires walking another 2 blocks in the opposite direction of your hotel when coming from the convention center. On the plus side they do have a pizza place that delivers and their food is really good.

the convention ran from Sunday to Tuesday. The hotel offered free breakfast but it didn't start until 7am on the the weekends, 6:30 on the weekdays. So I wondered over to the convention center food court only to find out that the only place open, and they weren't even really open, was a coffee shop. I'm not a fan of coffee so I just bought a slice of Lemon bread and went to my 7 am class. On Mon and Tues I was able to eat at the hotel before walking to the 7am classes. There were 3 classes in the morning with a 1/2 hour break between each. The tradeshow opened 1/2 hour after the last class. It only took 3 minutes, if you walked really slow, to get from the classes to the show.

I have a thing for studying people, so I would sit just outside the doors on the floor knowing that I had 1/2 hour to kill. I found it interesting to watch how the guards dealt with the convention goers who refused to reset their watches or check their facts. Most of the time people tried to walk in and the guards would stop them stating that the show didn't open until 12:30. They would look disappointed and go to the back of the line that was more of an ever growing crowd waiting to be let in. A few of the photographers had a chip on their shoulder and would claim to be vendors or speakers to try to get in early.

Vendors were a whole interesting group to watch. They were being allowed in, if they could get through the crowd to the door, so that they could set up their booths. Most went through without an issue. They had all been issued a specific ID that showed that they were a vendor. I guess some were pass swapping because they would become verbally hostile when the guards wouldn't let them in without the proper passes. The guards were very diplomatic about it. Explaining simply that they did not have the right pass so they couldn't get in. That didn't stop the gripping and complaining by some vendors and they angerily called their other vendors to bring them out a pass. I made a visual note of their behaviour and just didn't stop at those booths.

I don't know how many others even noticed those tantrums, or even cared. Most were to busy chatting as the crowd continued to edge closer to the door. And when that door finally did open it was like the 5am Black Friday sales event of the year. You either got out of the way, or got run over. This happend on all three days. The program was speficially planned so that there was enough time for the participants to form a several thousand person crowd in the middle of the hallway blocking all access to the other corriders.

The trade show is 16 rows of vendors with anywhere from 10 to 80 vendors in a row. Some vendors like Canon, Millers and Nikon take up huge amounts of space with couches and presentation area's were they bring in speakers for 1/2 hour lectures. There were also to mini lecture "theaters" (projection screens with rows of chairs) where speakers were brought in to present as well. These were sponsored by various organizations and the lectures tended to be longer.

The problem with these is that there is no way to find out who is speaking or on what until you get into the tradeshow and see the posterboard. Even then it's just a list of names. If you don't know who the person is then you have no idea, until they start their presentation what they will even be talking about.

Candy was the theme this year as almost every booth had various containers with everything from Mary Janes to Kit Kat's. I guess they figured that you would come to their booth if they had candy. As with most tradeshows they were also very into their trees. You could barely walk by a booth without someone wanting to hand you something.

One nice thing about this show is the badges. They are mailed to you in advance and all of your information is encrypted on a scan strip on the back. Many of the bigger vendors have invested in a reader so all they do is scan the back of your badge and they have all the info they need to spam, I mean, send you more information about them. It does tend to save time and allows you to save your business cards for more important things like potential clients. The other fun thing is that you can stop by the information booth and pick up a varity of stickers that go on the bottom of the badge. They designate if you are a PPA member, new to the convention, a member of some other group. They're just colorful and fun. Some of the are also infomative like Judge, Speaker, etc but those ones you can't just pick up. They are sent to you with your badge in the mail. 

I always start on one end of the show and go up and down every aisle make notes of who I want to revisit and why. This year I went with a shopping list in order to help me not make to many frivolous purchases. Once you get to the end of the trade show you come to the Art show gallery. It's divided into various categories and has some interesting work. I think I may enter a few pieces next year. I'll have to research the requirements.

The last class starts at 5pm and the trade show closes at 5:30. When you get out of the tradeshow you realize another problem. You have 1/2 hour to eat before the 7pm event and the food court has now closed for the day. Isn't that the weirdest thing? A convention center food court that doesn't open until 8 am or so and offers virtually nothing for breakfast and closes before 6:30. It really through me for a loop. I learned to eat lunch at 1 and dinner at 4 if I had any hope of eating at all.

The 7 pm event was different every night. The first night it was literally a party. Do it yourself tacos and various other Mexian foods were served on banquet tables and everyone recieved a drink ticket for one free drink. After that the bar was pay as you go. They had a live band which was ok but they were so loud that having a conversation was impossible. Most people were sitting on the floor in various groups because of a lack of seating. I guess if you like that loud "I'm 20 years old and in college" style of partying it went well. I managed to find a seat, ate, and attempted to talk to the people next me. We gave up after a few minutes when we both agreed that it just wasn't possible to have a conversation over the music.

Last years party with EPIC was so much nicer because we were able to talk to each other and meet others in our industry. Ok and it was cooler because a dead body and got to play with the new ds Mark III (or whatever it was that Canon came out with that year). The party this year, I met 5 people and I can't tell you there names or even if what type of photography they do because we could have a real conversation with all the noise.

The second night the presentation was Ann Geddes, or as QB calls her "The lady that puts babies in flowers". It was interesting. She talked about how she started out and showed several slideshows with her work. She also showed some behind the scenes of her studio. Earlier that day she did a book signing for anyone that pre-purchased her new book. While I found the presentation interesting I didn't get as much out of it as I thought I would.

The third night was the awards and a party to announce that next year they will be in Nashville. I thought about going to the awards show until I came down the stairs and saw several people in ball gowns entering the room for the awards. For a group that supposedly supports education they are really horrible about educating anyone as to what they need for this event.

Last year I asked about bringing my camera. No one responded so I didn't bring. One instructor had a fit because he was doing hands on training. This year, knowing that I wasn't going to do the EPIC track I asked again about bringing the camera. Again I got no answer. I didn't take it. Turns out that I would have only used it if I spent the extra money to do the pre conference workshops or to take digital notes.

There was a guy that would introduce the speakers and he always made several announcements as well. One of them was that they would email you the class survey the other was that for copyright reasons no one was to take pictures of the presentation. This was partly because the first 1/3 of almost any presentation invovles that instructor playing a slideshow of their thier work or pitching their latest product line. The amusing part was when we finally got to the presentation the number of shutters going off was deafening. Ok I'm being slightly melodramatic but seriously there were at least a dozen people who were taking images of each power point slide as it came up.

The lady with the huge omnibounce wasn't helping either. I know it's hard to shoot in the dark. But she was blinding the audience with this huge attachment to her flash. I quickly learned to dread seeing her walk into a room. The really hard part was that she aimed the flash at the audience and had a black cover over the bounce. So the only thing she appeared to be lighting was the audience.

Well that's the event in a nutshell. Ok maybe it's not exactly a nutshell but that was my experience. YMMV. If I go to Nashville I now know not to sign up until the entire schedule is sorted out somewhere around August and that if I'm going to get any information at the event then I need to take a laptop. 
 

 

Well this is going to be a busy month. Jan 10 I leave for Phoenix. I'm attending the PPA's Imaging event. Workshops, vendors and a variety of speakers. I went last year as part of EPIC and received my EPIC training. This year I've decided to go as just a PPA member so that I can have time to hear some of the more portrait oriented speakers. It's so much to pack into only a few days. I'm planning on heading out again in June to get my EPIC certification. I'll need to stage another crime scene shoot so that I'll have images to submit for the certification. Who knows, maybe my models will show up this time so I won't have to "kill" SS again.

At the end of the month I'm hoping not to have a scheduling conflict. There is a female photographer's workshop being held on the 24th in Hartford, but a group of friends his hosting a "photo shoot day" at the "end of the month". I'm really hoping that they don't overlap. This group has done photo shoot days in the past and they are always lots of fun.

With all of that going on I still need to work on shooting more. I hit a creative block the end of last year with all the fuss of waiting on the house to get done. It's still not done but it's getting there. In the meantime I've got plenty to do between packing up, clearing out and travel to keep me busy.

If anyone is interested in info about the female photographer workshop in Hartford just drop me a note and I'll give you the organizers name and number. I'm not involved in organizing the event.

IS has announced several major changes for the coming year. First they will be changing the BM algorithm yet again by introducing weighted keywords.

See Details Here

They have also announced a complete restructuring of their site. The Dollar Bin will be changed to a "collection" and the pricing will go back to a by size system ranging in price from 1 to 7 credits. The main collection will be consider a second collection and range in price from 1 to 28 credits. The third collection will be a premiere collection of Exclusive only work and will be priced from 10 to 60 credits. They are also adding a XXXL size and raising the price per credit in smaller packages.

See Details Here

There is also commentary about a new Fine Arts collection but at this point there is a lot of confusion as to if it's a separate 4th collection or just to be included in the Exclusive only Premiere collection.

We'll wait and see.

  Happy Holidays everyone!

I hate Windows. My windows program updated and then my system crashed. I really wish Microsoft would create a product and test it before they send it out as an update. QB has spent all day reviving my machine. On a good note I now have a new 4 GB hard drive in addition to my existing drives. On the downside I get to re-install all of my programs. Thankfully windows only crashed my C drive so my images weren't affected since I don't keep them there.

I was in the process of updating my website when the crash happend so my site is a little off but it's nothing major. The changes I was making were minor. The downside is I now have lost the site. QB wasn't able to recover it from the C: drive. I should be able to FTP the site on to the new drive so I most likely haven't lost too much.

Any incoming orders will be delayed by a few days until I can re-sync the images with the online ordering system but not to worry it will only be a day or two delay.

Well I'm moving on steadily. I have several images up at most of the "Big 6". I just started with 123 so that gives me 5. SXP rejected my application stating that I wasn't good enough to join. I think it's their standard answer to any new contributors since their parent company, Jupiter, was bought out by Getty. The big question now becomes what happens with SXP and who will replace them as the new 6 of the Big 6.

With IS openly favoring certain exclusives it's possible that they will move all the non-exclusives to SXP making IS the elitist place that it's always longed to be. Time will tell though, it could be that Getty will just shut down SXP altogether and try to regain it's market share by moving all the clients and contributors over to IS. It will be a few months before the admin know anything and get approvals from the Feds. It will be months after that before they tell any of the clients or contributors. And to think people thought I was silly for noticing that IS admins and Jupiter admins seemed to be a little to friendly at their last conference together.

The house is coming along. We should have appliences this week. The studio has a floor which is gorgeous. I have a family shoot planned for the saturday after Thanksgiving. We'll have to see how all that will work out. I have to say that I'm getting tired of having to pack everything up to move it when I want to do a shoot. Once the studio is finished I won't have to relocate so much, I hope. I have a house key now so that I can move things into the studio for temporary holding until they get the rest of the floor down. I don't know if we'll make thanksgiving but darn it we're trying.

I've talked for a while about my discontent with IS and have finally done something about it. I now have images at not only IS but also Shutterstock, Fotolia and Dreamstime. I just couldn't continue to be loyal to a company that refused to respect me or take any of my concerns seriously.

So far things look good but two weeks is to soon to really see how this will play out.

Eyes are supposed to be the windows to the soul.
 

I never know what to do with his eyes. Some days their brown, others their green, and on a few occasions they are even yellow. My dear child one day I will figure out what to do with those eyes.

I've been cleaning out my camera bag and have decided to get rid of a few items that I no longer need. I've listed the items on ebay for anyone who is interested. http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/azurelaroux

Amoung the items are a 20D body with battery (no manual), a 28-135 lens and an 85mm 1.2 L lens. These are all made by Canon.

I've finally given up on the concept that IS has any intention of fixing the myriad of problems that plague the site. Spamming of keywords continues unchecked. Just today an newly approved image of 2 children praying was keyworded with "God", "Father", "Jesus" and several other inappropriate words. The person was exclusive so the inspectors were supposed to fix the keywords before the image went live. But they didn't. I guess that's another person to put on that list that was mentioned in the forums of people who get special privliges.

At this point it's pretty obvious that someone picks who they want to succeed and who they don't. My sales were going great and then they just stopped. It didn't matter if I uploaded, what I uploaded or anything else, the sales just stopped and my images are routinely on the last pages of the search results. When I did finally get a niche set of images going, and was getting good sales on them, they also mysteriously dried up. Images that were selling every week on a regular basis suddenly weren't of interest anymore? I guess I was too much of a threat to someone that was on that special list so they had to flip the switch. Others have noticed the switch too but those that are loyal, or who know the truth but don't want it to get out, still claim that it's all "ebb and flow".

I'm tired of playing the game and have canceled my exclusivity. Why? IS has capped my income by not allowing my images to be seen and not providing me with the perks that were promised when I signed up. They are also deleting my postings in the forums, not mean "I hate istock" posts, but normal everyday common posts. The worst part is that some admin have decided that I'm fair game to be attacked. When I expressed concern that several elitest members were personally attacking me they basically told me that it no big deal.

IS isn't a business, it's a high school with all the games and favoritism that being come with being in high school. I graduated high school and it's time for me to move on to places that are more proffessional. I'll leave my images there for now, even though my few sales will most likely stop once I'm no longer exclusive. But the lesson has been learned. Don't bother staying were you have been told several times by admin that you are not wanted.