Eroticon 2012 conference being a guest speaker

I’ve just returned from being a guest speaker at the first Eroticon 2012 in Bristol.

What’s Eroticon I hear you ask?

Eroticon 2012 is the UK’s first conference for Sex Bloggers and Erotica Writers, more here.

So why was I there?

Well I’m not known for my Blogging about sex or erotic writing that’s for sure, I’m no writer. However, I was asked to speak about photography, which I know a bit about. I was also asked to take photos during the day for publicity and record purposes.

Both tasks I really enjoyed. I did find that doing the photographs for the event came with a few minor challenges. One was that some of the delegates didn’t want to be photographed, nothing new there really, however in this respect my life was made somewhat easier as they were identified by a pink lanyard. I did wonder if some of the delegates chose this lanyard simply because it was pink in colour! Doing crowd shots became difficult as there would be a mix of pink and black lanyards. Taking shots at registration was also difficult as I didn’t know whether they were going to be a pink or black lanyard wearer.  The other minor challenge was trying to be discrete and not getting in the way, but getting near enough to get good shots. I didn’t want to block the view of delegates who have paid to attend the event but equally I wanted to record the event.

A warm welcome and goody bag

Delegates arrive

I dropped into every session to take photographs and as a result I did come away from the conference learning loads about many different things, from techie things like needing a cache on WordPress to speed up downloads, I learnt about endorphins being released during BDSM spanking, sessions on self-publishing and marketing your work also struck a cord. In all I gleaned many useful piece of information and learnt things about subjects I knew little or nothing about. All of the session were, informative, well considered and helpful. It’s a difficult job to get over your point in a one hour timeslot at a conference, so well done to all the speakers, your preparation paid off.

Self-Publishing, going indie session with MK Elliot

Networking

I met and chatted to many people at the event, some of whom had seen me exhibiting at Erotica, so it was nice to talk to them again. Many people popped by and introduced themselves and have a chat. The Twitter feed was certainly busy throughout the day as people Tweeted what they were doing and had just seen. Many people knew each other or knew of each other via Twitter or their blogs so for many it was a chance to meet for the first time or re-acquaint themselves with old friends. It was a very relaxed event with everyone seeming to enjoy themselves and I saw many many notebooks with copious amounts of notes written on them. A hearty congratulations and well done must do to Ruby Kiddell who did all the organising for this event.

The Book and Print stall

Improving your photography

My session was title ‘Improving your photography’ and was scheduled for after lunch at 2:15pm. It’s probably the worst time to have a session as all most people want to do after lunch is sit and fall asleep! I may not have helped the situation as I dimmed the room lights to improve the visibility of my projected images. At 2:15pm I only had one person in the room so I was getting a little worried that the session would be a one-on-one, but soon after that the room started to fill and and I began my session. For some bizarre reason my projector had swapped its menus onto Chinese language and it was impossible to check the projector settings before I started, apart from the obvious focus and zoom settings. This meant I was unable to adjust the keystoning or check the resolution settings. It was not until I was about 5 slides in my talk I noticed that the projector had a peculiar crop on it where it had trimmed about an eighth off the right-hand edge of the frame. This wasn’t a problem on most of my shots, but on a few it did affect the composition and cropped off a number of important parts of the image. Dam annoying but nothing I could really do about it, as there was not enough time to learn Chinese to swap the menu back to English language. Annoyances aside I enjoyed delivering my session and I hope I helped some of the delegates with their photography skills and techniques. If you attended the session I’d be more than pleased to hear your thoughts about the session. Was it pitched too low, too high or about right? What would you have liked to hear about, what did you find useful? Getting feedback from delegates is always good as it can be sometimes difficult to pitch the session at the right level.

I’m looking forward to 2013 where I hope I’ll be asked to participate in some form or other at the next event.

Delegates gather and chat