Well, that was disappointing 
Got back a couple of hours ago from the NG Traveller seminar.
Overall, I'd say that its a good thing it was free, since it was 80 miles/2 hours +$20 for parking & ferry (round trip) for me to get into NYC & uptown.
The photo pro speaker, Michael Melford, was fine for what I'd suspect that they asked of him. He gave a slide show of his images ("America the Beautiful", which he has used before for charities) and some personal commments here and there, but it was thin on tips, techniques, travel insight, etc ... the whole reason why I was attending. A lot of the attenders brought their camera gear.
Michael was apparently supposed to be available for Q&A, but what really made it a diappointing day was the poor management that prevented this from occuring.
A lot of good it did to pre-register: they never checked anyone. As a result, while I'm not sure how large the Walter Reade Theatre is (my guess is a 300 seat house), the problem was that they had more attenders than house seats, by what appeared to me to be at least 100.
Their apparent "oops" recovery plan was to sidebar Michael after he had already started and asked if he could give his presentation a second time (which he graciously agreed). As a result, the Q&A session was completely abolished for those of us who faithfully registered, showed up on time, etc, and weren't necessarily inclined to hang around for 75-90 minutes "just in case" after the 2nd show.
After the slide show, we exited to a
too-small-for-this-crowd reception room next to the Theatre. The seminar's hosts - - Nikon, Tamron and B&H - - had tables, along with some finger food & juice/soda. Tamron's was by the door, which just created a bottleneck. Nikon's was unattended, oddly enough. B&H was doing good, and in addition to their standard catalog, was passing out a 24 page hardcopy flier that lists some otherwise unadvertised specials. You can get them on the web if instead of going to their standard website, you go to:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/psjan06 (ie, note the "psjan06" directory at the end).
Since it was such a zoo, I ended up going downtown to B&H's store. It was also quite crowded, but much more managable. If you've never been there, its quite an impressive place (and do check hours before going; IIRC, they're always closed on Saturdays, etc). While I was there, I checked out their used gear upstairs, then also went over and fat-fingered the Canon L 400mm DO IS f/4 lens...for its focal length, its very light! Its 4.3 lbs, which "isn't that much more than" the L 70-200mm IS f/2.8, which weighs in at 3.5lbs.
I want it Only catch is its price is a bit steep ($5200). I don't think I can eat that much Macaroni & Cheese to convince Margaret
Finally, one parting shot: you can find rude photographers anywhere. There was someone in the audience who was taking photos of *every* image as Michael would put it up on display. And of course, this boor was using his strobe! I was a bit surprised that Michael ignored him; another audience member (or three) nearby told him to stop, which he did. IMO, it would have been a good opportunity to have mentioned something about "Copyright Theft".
-hh
