Hello there everybody! So in the grain of bringing more traffic to the site and updating a blog more frequently I am going to do a blog about my design ideas and thoughts for a new booth that I am going to be building in the next month.

      Omega Image Photography is going to be attending our first bridal show ever in a little over a month at a local event venue. So in preparation for this I need to bring a booth to bear that will get some attention and some leads for possible contracts. Of course I have been mulling over the idea of doing a bridal show for the last few years. This one came up and it is going to be the first year for this show (so who knows what the turn out will be like?) But since it is literally as close to my home and base of operations as you can get (within 4 miles.) I fretted over making the plunge on doing it, but with some familial advice I decided that now was the time to act. So the booth space is rented and I am committed. Now mind you I have never done a trade show event as a photographer from a selling perspective. I have done events like this but for other products and other perspectives, so this is going to be one of those new and interesting things for me.


      UNFORTUNATELY, due to me never having done one before I do not have a booth or ANY of the major marketing supplies that I need to stock a booth. For those of us in the photo industry we know that our booths have to be visually stunning as that is what we are selling at the end of the day. You can be the nicest person in the world but have shots you can't back and people will pass you by in favor of a more polished and shiny booth. Thus I need a bunch of printed shots for display in the booth and the means to hang them. I need display items of some of the target items I am looking to push sales on for my customers. Luckily I do have some of these items already purchased and ready to roll. They are not exactly what I would like to run with in the booth for pushing bridal sales but I have to work with the money I have and not the mega bucks I would need to spend to get what I would like to have at the end of the day. I have been rolling around in my head how much of the booth I am going to try and get into a vertical format. Some of this depends on the space that I get when I am at the event. If I am placed on the corner of a row of exhibitors I am going to try for more of a two wall system and try to keep the space more inviting and open to possible clients. But if I am in between other exhibitors I would very much like to put up 3 "walls" to kind of keep my space a little more private. The space is 10x10ft so I have plenty of floor to deal with, but as we also know...floorspace ain't gonna sell photos. So since I don't know how many walls I am going to need until the day of the show I am going to try and keep my wall system as modular as possible. Of course this also affects me from a printed materials standpoint as well. Since I don't know if I am going to have two or three walls I have to plan for printing enough to cover three walls and then if I only have 2 walls I can be more selective on what I show on them. I plan on having a small table or some kind of custom wooden bench that I can setup for "information taking" where folks will be able to sign up to win an (as of yet) undetermined prize. Also thinking about putting something circular in the middle of the booth so I can maximize usage of my floor area with shots. Along with these stands, I am strongly considering a couple candy dishes or something like that as a little "hey stop and look at me!" Have to draw them in the door to get them talking! The framework for my "walls" I am almost certain now will be 1" pvc piping that is built with threaded pieces so that I can easily disassemble and build it on site quickly. Over the pvc pipe I am going to run quilt backing and maybe some other drapery to give more depth. Which brings me to my current dilemma. How am I going to hang photos requiring to hang on there. After researching all of the options I have I am thinking I am going to be going in a cable and tension hook design there. While not overly cheap it should allow me the flexibility I need while holding the load amounts I am going to have.

       From a display standpoint I am going to have to open my playbook to more than just wedding shots as I simply do not have enough of them to make the booth look rounded out. So I am going to be filling in the gaps with portraits and at least one of my fireworks photos. Of course the fireworks shots I can promise will be there as it is going to be my example for aluminum printing on a large scale. As for the other shots I am going to be doing some on standard photo paper and then running standard frames on them. But as many as I can afford I am going to be investing in the Bay Photo Xposer printed shots. They are basically built for trade shows and things of this nature. They can be deployed in less than a minute and are printed on solid quality canvas for longevity. Of course this means those suckers are NOT cheap, also you cannot get them in smaller sizes so any shots I do on them will be 10"x20" at the very least. While this is good in that it means I need less to stock the booth it is also bad in that they are expensive and I am sure I will have other shots within the year this year that I will want to be putting out there for any future shows. Thankfully the system allows for this in that they do sell just the print without the backing, which is cheaper...just not by much. LOL!!!!

       Since I am designing this whole thing in my head on the fly it will be interesting to see how it comes out when I complete it. The dog show sign last year came out close to how I wanted it. The mechanical of it didn't live up to hopes but that isn't on the sign that is on me hoping for more than I should have from the Raspberry Pi. For now though I have a little over a month to get this idea out of my head and into completion! Better get started!!!!