Everybody Let's Pose . . .

Last weekend we made our yearly visit to Springfield, Massachusetts. This show is a big enough deal each year -- all of New England comes out -- that Susan Pickering Rothamel from USArtQuest and Tim Hammonds from Scor-It both asked us if we could arrange for demo space in our booth (translation -- they paid their own way). So we had our usual 30-foot booth, with 10-foot demo spaces on each end. What a great setup (I couldn't get it all in one picture) -- and what a great turnout! The customers said they loved it, and so did we -- we're gonna do the same thing in Novi, Michigan the first weekend in August.

I have noticed over time that the "heavy hitters" in the demo world have great formal poses. If you tell them you're going to take a picture, you get the same look every time.



Here are Sue and Tim at their respective demo spaces when they knew the camera was there. But I prefer the stealth method when I can . . .



If you shoot enough of them, the best shots are almost as good as formal poses.



And the group shots are even better . . .



I was a little slow at the shutter on this one -- Sue had just found out that a lady at her demo table was celebrating her birthday at the show, and led the others in a rousing singing of "Happy Birthday".



By contrast, no one ever gets formal shots of Karen and me, unless we're in costume for the Stampaway Preview Party in Cincinnati (and anyone who has seen us there knows that's hardly formal!).

And I learned something about our customers -- we had a massive turnout for the giveaway on Saturday. So I decided to shoot pictures to try to catch all of them (it took three).



This was the view to my left -- I stopped in the middle of the giveaway and picked up my camera. A few people in the back seemed to know what was going on.



This is what happened with the middle and right views when I added a simple phrase -- "Yes, you can say hi!"

Our booth will be in Collinsville, Illinois, this weekend -- come out and see us at the Gateway Center Saturday and Sunday!