We arrived at Utrecht Central Station at about 14:00 in the afternoon, and after a small snack and some coffee, we headed for the jaarbeurshallen which is only a 5 minutes walk from the station. Already, we saw a lot of people with SLR cameras coming our way, so we knew we must be heading in the right direction. At the entrance, already we found a lot of people gathered around a pretty model and shooting pictures, which almost made us forget that there was a big hall to explore too Anyway, two big halls were reserved for the event and there was quite a lot to explore: some workshops on digital photo editing were held (which we unfortunately all missed), almost all major camera companies were present to try and sell you a camera, and, also a lot of booths/stands had some equipment to sell, like for example rucksacks, drawing tablets (wacom), or offered to print out your photos on a big sheet of paper. Unfortunately, these stand made up the biggest part of the event, and having missed all workshops, we found ourselves wondering what else there was to do.

Luckily, the organisation also thought of more active things to do during the event, so there were a couple of areas reserved for different kinds of photography. There was a sort of half pipe with skaters for action photography, an area with cars and beautiful models for the more aesthetically inclined , a booth with a home studio set up and a model to try this out, and some barely dressed babes for the horny bastards (and yes I have some pics of them too ). However, the most beautiful performance was held near the sony stand; three ballerina’s were dancing there, which was already a nice opportunity to shoot some beautiful pictures, but at a specific moment in time one of the women was pulled up to about 3/4 meters height and performed a sort of dance in the air. I think some of my most beautiful pictures have been shot there, see below for a picture.

Next to this performance, the most challenging thing to photograph correctly were the skaters. I did not expect that at all. I thought action photography would be the most dull form of photography available, pick you correct shutter speed, and snap some pics, nothing more I thought. How could I’ve been more wrong, timing was very important and how often did we fail to get the result we wanted. It’s all about anticipation, and with such a big amount of bad pictures, the times when one did come out as we wanted led to all the more satisfaction. At a certain time, you get the hang of it, and then it becomes a lot of fun, experimenting a lot too. Sufficive to say we spent a lot of time at that booth.

While the zoom experience was a lot of fun, after three hours we had seen most of the things there were to see, and decided it was time to go for dinner and the journey back to our beloved Limburg after that. Although there was a lot to see and a lot to learn at the event, I feel, there still could have been a little more action and less commerce. Maybe, we missed a lot in the morning with the portrait photography courses and the workshops, but still some things could have been done a bit better. One thing that really annoyed me were the fellow photographers that always wanted to get the better place just in front of you, a keeping that occupied for a long time; instead of allowing each other to snap at least a couple of photographs so we could all enjoy the event together. Another thing that was a bit weird for a photography event is that the lighting conditions were very bad for photography. In most cases, you needed either a flash or you had a very bright spotlight on your photograph. Maybe they could organise something to prevent these things from happening in the future. So let me know if you want to join me next year . But well, it is something to expect when going to such a big event and I must say that for a first time the event was already quite appealing.