It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but mostly it was the best of times. The Photography Show is the biggest event of its kind in the UK, and has the added benefit of being centrally located, so it was an obvious choice of venue for our first ever Sunny 16 meetup.
In fact, not only was this the first ever meetup we were holding, it was also the first time all three hosts of the Sunny 16 Podcast were going to be in the same place at the same time!
As this was all new to us we had no idea how many people to expect, or how to organise, so whilst this may seem like a shameless plug for the site the article is appearing on, Photowalk.me becoming a thing really helped us out. On the day the weather was pretty terrible, freezing cold and snowy in parts of the country, so it kept a couple of people away, but still there were 11 of us at the show!
An initial meeting in the foyer over a nice cup of tea/coffee was the perfect way to get to know everyone and psyche ourselves up for plunging into the show. There was the inevitable comparing of cameras, which ranged from Hassleblads to plastic 110 toys, and everything in between, all loaded up and ready to play.
Once the fortifying and gear inspection was over we headed out to brave the show floor, and made a beeline for the Disabled Photographers stand. This charity is in attendance every year at the show, and use it as their one and only venue to sell off all the donated gear they receive throughout the year. Suffice to say there was a LOT of interesting photography kit on sale, and many of our meetup attendees, not least of which host Rachel, spent a lot of time at that stand picking up new cameras and kit!
From there we went to see Lomography UK and get some fun film, we got our pictures taken over at the Instax stand, checked out the darkroom equipment at the Patterson stand, and generally had a good mooch around the show before retiring for lunch. Post lunch there was more mooching, a little more shooting and a lot more hanging around the Disabled Photographers stand, before we ended the day as we’d started it over a nice cup of tea.
Not a conventional photowalk by any standard, but a great excuse to get together with a wonderful group of humans and enjoy their company and conversation. The Photography Show doesn’t really have much in the way of engagement for analog photographers, but getting to enjoy the day with a group of new friends made it all worthwhile. While at the show we recorded a few bits for the podcast which can be heard on episode 93 of the Sunny 16 Podcast.
Will we do it against next year? Almost certainly, and hopefully we’ll be arranging another meetup later in the year in the same vein of more socialising than shooting!
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Thank you Graeme for writing this guest post about the Sunny 16 Podcast meetup. It’s a shame about the weather (definitely not Sunny 16 weather), but it sounds like a good time was had anyway. Martin – PhotoWalk.Me
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