Hammersmith

This is a view from under the flyover outside Hammersmith underground station.  I was visiting "The Societies of Photographers" convention at the Novotel in Hammersmith - or at least the trade show which is part of the convention. This is a new location for this event, and offered rather better exhibition space than before.

Normally there are lots of 20x16 prints on display from their competition, but there were only a few today.  I later realised that judging isn't complete until the end of today:  there will probably be rather more prints for viewing tomorrow.

I had a long chat with a couple of the representatives on the Panasonic stand. They have some interesting products now.

Over lunch I was chatting to a guy who was sharing the cafe table with me.  It turned out he was a dealer interesting in buying old film cameras and darkroom equipment.  After establishing that my enlarger wasn't particularly valuable  (the colour head with dial in dichroic filters apparently isn't in demand - he said that colour paper was only available in rolls so, presumably, not of interest to the home enthusiast, although I also used the colour filters to adjust contrast on monochrome multigrade paper), he handed me his card and I realised that he used to have a shop in the south London town where I was born and lived the first 17 years of my life.  He also used to live in the area.  He went on to mention that he was selling darkroom equipment to a school in the area who were teaching photography:  the school turned out to be the successor of the one I attended.  It's a small world.