Newborn Photography Show

Well, I’m back after a fabulous few days away speaking at The Newborn Photography Show in Birmingham. This is the first time this show has been run and it was a great success. The main difference between this and most other photographic trade shows is that it was aimed specifically at the Newborn Photography market.

An awful lot of trade shows that I go to have men photographing scantily clad women and sometimes as a woman this can be a bit off putting and it was interesting to see that over 75% of the people attending were female. The Newborn market is a growing part of the industry and it has a new generation of photographers joining it. These aren’t necessarily people that spend ages reading endless camera reviews and “pixel peeking”; they want tools that will do the job and it was interesting to see how many of them are moving away from the traditional Canon/Nikon dSLR’s to the mirrorless camera systems provided by Olympus, Fuji and Sony. One advantage of all of these is the size and weight..

I think it is fair to say that the majority of people I spoke to were at the early stages of building their businesses and this has to be an ideal target market for suppliers; a good relationship with your suppliers is worth so much, they have access to an awful lot of industry knowledge and can let you know what products sell well in each market ! I find the trade events like this a good opportunity to chat to the suppliers we use, find out what new products they have and put faces to the names…

I personally would love to see more camera bags and accessories aimed at women. I don’t necessarily want something that looks like a handbag but something a bit brighter, more stylish and individual would be good.

It was also fun to be working at the Botanical Gardens and I took the opportunity to have a quick wander round one morning before my class started…. Being a new show there was no “we have always done” to overcome and it is good to see new new, fresh ideas being bought in to the industry. So, if you didn’t make it along this year it has to be a date in your diary next year !