Hi everyone!
What’s been going on at Canon? It was heads down last month as we scrambled to prepare for two of the year’s largest photography events that both took place in Sydney last weekend – PMA (Photo Marketing Association International) and the CAPPAs (Canon Australian Professional Photography Awards). Did anyone make it to either event?
Canon has exhibited at PMA for as long as I can remember. It’s an opportunity for us to get in front of some of the best in the photo imaging industry and show off our new products for the year. I was looking after the digital SLR area of the stand and we had a continuous line of passionate photographers coming to visit all weekend which was great. Canon had its full range of products on display as well as a body painter… which might seem slightly out of place but we were actually using her to showcase the capabilities of the EOS 5D Mark II with EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens and printing the images on the new PIXMA 9500 Mark II and our imagePROGRAF large format printers. The results were amazing.
The CAPPAs also took place at PMA over the weekend. If you haven’t heard of them before, the CAPPAs are one of Australia’s most recognised professional photography awards and have been running for 33 years (Canon has been a major sponsor for eight). What I like about them is that you can actually go and watch the judging process. Over the weekend, some of Australia’s most recognised photographers judged the entries in each category (i.e. portrait, landscape, wedding) and the public could go and listen to the critique and scoring.
The winner was then announced at an award ceremony on Monday night – this year’s winner was
Charmaine Heyer from Queensland. Images below. As well as winning the prestigious title of Canon AIPP Professional Photographer of the Year, Charmaine also won the Illustrative category.
Charmaine wins $20,000 worth of Canon EOS professional digital SLR gear and the title of 2009 AIPP Canon Australian Professional Photographer of the Year.
This year 2,367 images were entered by 655 professional and student photographers. You can read more and see the category winners on the Canon web site.
We are hoping Charmaine will have a chat to us on this blog so make sure you check back in for that. You might also want to check out Canon’s Creative for a Cause site as Charmaine will now join Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard as a judge for Canon’s Creative for a Cause campaign,
Also, there was a lot of talk at both these events about Canon’s newest professional digital SLR – the EOS 5D Mark II. Most people were commenting on the video capability. If you haven’t already, I recommend you check out the “The Trainer”, a short film shot by director Clayton Jacobson (Kenny; Kenny’s World) using the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and The making of “The Trainer”. It’s really impressive!
That’s it from me.