This past week, Microsoft held the Pro Photography Summit, with many attendees being people who make a living through their photographic skills. In "Photo Business News & Forum Microsoft Pro Photo Summit 2008 - Recap" John Harrington not only supplies some follow-up links from the presentation but also digs into friction around defining who is a "Pro" and who is not.
Interesting reading.
I'm not tracking it because I'm a pro. I'm not even really a Prosumer Photographer (the enthusiast who spends lots and lots and lots of money on professional level gear). Okay, I've got some nice glass but I'm shooting on a Canon 400D, not even a 40D, let alone a 5D.
And that's fine for me.
But I am amazed going around and paying attention to the kinds of cameras people have nowadays. When I was at Cougar Mountain Zoo taking a few shots, a couple showed up and they each had super impressive camera gear. While my lovely Rebel let out an enthusiastic ka-snap with each shot, their's whispered along quickly with barely discernable clicks.
And hiking around Twin Falls State Park revealed lots of folks toting about heavy duty gear.
Hope sells. It sells gold mining tools and it sells great camera gear. The hope to publish your stuff and have it syndicated as news or syndicated through flickr / Getty Images, well, that inspires people to get better results and to enjoy chasing the dream. Let alone the joy of taking great photos to share. And anything that helps photographers in that pursuit - and that makes them feel as good as a Pro - they are going to love.
Kettle, you're black.
Adobe 9 [dive into mark] goes into the initial sins discovered trying to install Acrobat 9 and all the crap and inconvenience that comes with it. Additionals:
Back when I was on Microsoft InfoPath, I saw the genesis of Acrobat into more than a convenient reader of PDF files but rather a whole new platform that Adobe wanted to scale up into, leveraging the wide distribution they got with Acrobat being a useful PDF reader (providing high-fidelity rendering in a low-fidelity HTML world). Form editing and more. Who knew Acrobat would be a competitor for an Office product?
And then they started glomming and glomming and glomming technology. And they have made Acrobat a performance pig.
Acrobat has become a clumsy vector for delivery of Adobe strategy. That seems like a violation of trust. One that reaps a black, bitter harvest.
Like, you know, my new HP desktop having a one-off PDF reader for the traditional use of plain ole PDF. Reading.
Non-technical stuff going on with EricRi in the Northwest.
email: Eric_Richards at ericri dot com
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Disclaimer: The postings (and comments) here represent personal point of views and in no way represent the point of view or official opinions of my employer (Microsoft Corporation). The postings here are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. And if you're reading this blog, you're not only incredibly discerning, you're also knee-weakening good looking.
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