A Cheerful New Year From The Editorial Desk

I cannot speak for the rest of the staff - who may be at their several homes lying down with cold cloths over their faces, but I feel fine this morning. New Years Eve swept over the house and nothing seems to have been dislodged.

Writing the weblog column has been a great deal of fun this last year - assisted not a little in the last two months by the fact that it could be banged out with no telephones shrilling in the ear and a better studio for photos. That latter point is still in the process of improvement - I think that all studios evolve as time goes on. The Little Studio has taken a new turn with the business of product illustration. All those old technical books on studio stuff are now fertile ground.

You'll see a post a day in the coming year - the experiment of morning and afternoon posting was interesting but if the stream of new products slows too much you can tun out of novelties. Of course there is never a dull moment in photography and Camera Electronic and Shoot Workshops seem to have such a diverse connection with the amateur and professional world that if the Weblog reporter - The Photographic Spectator as it were - ventures further than the shop racks there is always something going on.

Some years ago Camera Electronic adopted the slogan " We Love Photography" and I looked upon the phrase with a rather jaded eye. I've since come to see that the various people who make up the sales, service, and business team in the place actually DO love the sport. Err, hobby. I mean business. No - wait - it is art. Oh all right, it is science, if you must. Vice? Who said vice...? Well anyway, the team actually does think photography most of the time and this has real advantages for the clients and for themselves.

It means that if one person doesn't know the answer to a question, another may. Indeed we all have our special areas of interest quite apart from assigned positions or set tasks. It is the interests that make the different people most valuable, because they will know stuff far in advance of the current press release or warehouse blurb. In my case it is not so much knowing what is coming but what used to be - and I can tie this in to modern practice sometimes. And sometimes I haven't the faintest clue what I am writing about, but I poke the thing with a stick and stand back.

Well, on with the motley. I would appreciate it if each person reading this column would come into the shop in the next couple of weeks and buy a camera bag, because they are starting to increase in exponential numbers. Buy two - you can never have too many camera bags.

Uncle Dick