“The camera doesn’t take the photo, you do. Use your eye and your heart…” This is what I heard from one of the instructors at the Photo Expo at the Javits Center, yesterday. This event every October is quite overwhelming. As you walk in and see the multiple aisles, most are drawn to either their favorite vendor, to try out new cameras & amazing lenses, to see all sorts of new techniques and equipment, or to the print companies who are showing the quality of their printers. It’s also a gallery, since the best way to show how great the printers and papers are, is to display work. They’re showing famous celebrities or amazing scenics from around the world, taken by well respected photographers. There are also instructors giving free technique lessons in Photoshop for those interested at various company areas.

One thing that I noticed this year was that Hewlett Packard was distributing a small pamphlet “Green IT for Dummies” (not for sale) created by Wiley. They also handed out a sell sheet featuring recycling information for large format banners, and had on display an example of what happens to ink cartridges when we recycle them, the process of how they are broken down, and eventually can be made back into cartridges again. To read more about what HP is doing, visit: http://www.hp.com/recycle

I then walked over to the company area for Epson printers and since I use these, always like to see what’s new as far as paper and equipment. I asked one of the employees about what Epson was doing to recycle catrtridges, paper, equipment and whether they are creating any recycled paper. He informed me that they didn’t have any literature about it, and that I should remember that their paper is part plastic, but to look at their site about their commitment to the future, which I did. Here’s what I found on the Epson corporate site:

Environmental Vision 2050:

“…Epson is aiming to reduce CO2 emissions by 90% across the lifecycle of all products and services by the year 2050. At the same time, as a member of the ecosystem Epson will continue to work towards restoring and protecting biodiversity together with local communities.

Epson has set the following four key conditions in order to work towards achieving Environmental Vision 2050:
1.Reduction of CO2 emissions by 90% across the entire product life cycle.
2.Inclusion of all products in the resource reuse and recycling loop.
3.Reduction of direct CO2 emissions by 90%, and elimination of global warming gas emissions other than CO2.
4.Restoration and preservation of biodiversity as a member of the ecosystem, together with local communities.

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Picturehouse  NY

Last week I attended Picturehouse NY, and this is always a favorite event of mine. All the photo stock agencies in one place and they are all so friendly and welcoming. Maybe it’s because we all do business through the internet and sometimes it’s nice to meet the people we work with, in person. It’s also nice to meet stock agencies that are just starting out and see what they’re offering. In some cases, I met the actual photographers in their booths. One of the agencies, Bridgeman, Art, Culture, History,  had huge blow-ups of famous paintings with small cut-outs, and took our photograph with our face in place of the actual face, that was so funny and then they slipped the printed picture into a mousepad which I’m now using.

If you’ve never been to either of these FREE events, I highly recommend marking your calendar for next year. For anyone reading this today, Photo Expo at the Javits Center is still on, go now!