My wife and I had a wonderful weekend as we attended the 2006 Outdoor & Digital Photo Seminar. She had gotten us tickets to this worthwhile seminar, which is put on by Outdoor Photographer magazine and is co-sponsored by Nikon, Bogen, Lexar & Epson.

On the first day, Saturday, we were entertained and informed by the great Travel Photographer Bob Krist. A longtime National Geographic photographer, his photographic skills are awesome.

We were regaled by how he had taken many of his endearing people shots from many far-flung locations. Using local talent to help him scout locations and translate languages (What? You don’t speak pidgin??) he was able to go places and meet people far from the beaten path.
We were regaled with tales of his adventure, while we were given insight into his techniques and thought processes.

He presented many of his published photos, while telling us how he took the shot and things like if he used fill-flash, rear-curtain sync, reflectors etc. It was like being a photo-assistant without having to be on location. Very good info.

His presentation skills matched his photographic skills and we enjoyed spending the entire day with him.

One nice thing with these seminars, unlike the wonderful Nikon School, is that while you do cover a great deal of information via the lecture, they allow ample opportunity to ask questions.

Another nice thing was that during breaks, Bob Krist stood around and politely talked to anyone who approached him, no “super-star” attitude here.

He bemoaned the fact that all national magazines were asking for more now, and for less money and appreciated the fact that he’d been able to work at the Geographic during some of it’s best periods, they allowed the photographer the time and the budget to do a story justice.

On Sunday, we were entertained by Bruce Dale, a 30-year veteran from National Geographic. While not quite the orator that Bob Krist was, his technical skills are incredible.

He showed us some of his great photos, including some which he took by mounting cameras to the rear vertical stabilizer of a Boeing 747. The shots were, as you’d expect, awesome.

He also showed us pictures of a converted radio-controlled army tank to which he’d mounted a radio-actuated stuffed replica of a road-runner bird. he’d been taking pictures of snakes and stuff in the southwest desert and found himself being romatically persued by a male roadrunner (beep-beep!).

He talked with a “road-runner specialist” friend of his and found out that road-runners were easily fooled by decoys. the bird was so enamoured with him, it even brought him gifts to the inside of his van as it sat on-location!

The whole story (or most of what we were privy to) is in this month’s PC Photo magazine, so check it out.

Bruce is quite the technician and showed us some amazing photos he’d done for National Geographic using counterfiet watches he’d gotten from Cartier. he shot bullets through the watches and caught the moment of impact. One shot even revealed the shock-wave eminating from the bullet tip just as it was about to pierce the back of the watch. Amazing.

Also present at the seminar was SAMYs camera which had a few deals (note to self, big SAMY’s sale coming next week!), and Nikon.

I was able to play with the amazingly small Nikon D-80 camera. It’s a 10-megapixel beauty that’s about the same size as many of the EVF cameras now on the market. this camera will be available with the new 18-135 lens and should be a great, compact travel package. Bob Krist even mentioned that he might start using these for professional-assignment given their small size and ease of transport.

And,if I interpreted the winks and the nods of my informant correctly & much to my delight, Nikon will be coming out with a new, smaller flash, possibly called the SB-200, which will be about Nikon SB-50 sized and feature (Yay!!) the awesome i-TTL CLS system capabilities.

I will start looking for this to appear just before or during Photokina. I’ve already started saving my soda-bottles to get my deposit back to buy one.

All in all a worthwhile and awesome weekend!

See Ya!