Peter Cripps Photography

Every year for the last 11 years (with the exception of the lockdown year of 2020) I have been making my annual pilgrimage to The Photography Show (TPS) in Birmingham. This year, rather inconveniently for me, it was moved to the ExCel exhibition centre in London’s Docklands. Inconvenient because the shows home for the years I have been attending has been at the National Exhibition Centre NEC), some five miles from where I live whereas the ExCel requires a 3-hour door-to-door journey and an overnight stay in London.

I think for me TPS has become a bit like Christmas – you feel you should ‘celebrate’ it but afterwards wonder if it was really worth the effort. Maybe it’s fear of missing out on seeing the latest piece of wonder-kit or the fact I might get to see and hear a famous photographer and learn what it is that makes them great. Whatever it is, I always feel the compulsion to make the effort to attend – even when it’s a hundred miles away!

It turns out the ExCel is not quite as bad to get to as I had thought. It is now served by the new Elizabeth Line so only five stops from central London (Tottenham Court Road). For some reason on arrival in London the Transport for London (TfL) app I use advised using the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) which I had used before but unfortunately made the rookie error of getting on a train going in the opposite direct to ExCel and wasting 30 minutes in correcting my mistake. Having realised I should have used the cross-city Elizabeth Line, which I did from then on, it was a breeze to get to the exhibition and back to my hotel.

Not unexpectedly the look and feel of the show at ExCel is much the same as it was at its previous home. The usual vendors were there peddling their wares. The big three: Nikon, Canon and Sony having the largest stands tactfully separated by their smaller rivals (Fujifilm, OM Digital Solutions, Pentax and SIGMA) and a myriad of exhibitors providing lighting, print, album, carrying and software solutions as well as the retailers who were actually selling the gear.

Talking of gear, three things stood out for me this year: First was the large number of Chinese lens companies: Haida, Laowa, Samyang, Sirui, Sonida, TTArtisan, Viltrox and Yongnuo were the ones I saw, there may have been more. Together these companies offer a bewildering array of lenses of every possible focal length at very competitive price points which certainly give the camera makers a run for their money. I was almost tempted by a 23mm F1.4, Fujifilm X mount lens from Viltrox which would have been roughly a third of the Fujifilm equivalent. I managed to restrain myself however.

Second, rather inevitably I suppose, was the use of the dreaded ‘AI’ word that was being promoted by the photo editing and management software providers. Not just the big players like Adobe but by newer companies, many of whom I had never heard of, like Excire, Evoto AI and Neurapix.

Finally, film is back. It was good to see companies like ILFORD Photo, HARMAN Technology and Analogue Wonderland in attendance but what to use to shoot that film on? Well, it turns out Ricoh/Pentax have bucked the trend of pretty much every other manufacturer (apart from Leica with their re-released M6) and come out with a new film camera, the PENTAX 17. It will be interesting to see if other manufacturers pick up on this and start releasing new (or new, old) film cameras. Maybe an OM Digital Solutions ‘Trip’ camera?

So, that’s the gear side of things.

Over the years of attending TPS I’ve become less and less interested in all those nice shiny objects. The real benefit for me is increasingly about listening to other photographers speak. Sure, some of them are a bit gear infatuated too, however more and more I am seeing people who want to explain why they do photography and what makes their creative drive what it is. This year, the standout speaker for me was David duChemin who, I must confess I had never even heard of.

I came across his talk purely by chance as I happened to walk past the area he was speaking in just as he was about to start his talk. duChemin is not only a brilliant wildlife and documentary photographer but also a very articulate presenter and and writer.

David’s talk was loosely based around his latest book called Light, Space, and Time: Essays on Camera Craft and Creativity. I don’t yet own this but do intend to buy it once it is available in printed form at Hive (I’m trying not to order stuff from Amazon as a matter of principle these days).

David’s talks and books are very much around the why of photography and less about technique and certainly not about the gear. As he says at the start: “Light, space and time is all we’ve got”. His philosophy and approach to photography is encapsulated in these six things:

1. Imagination
2. Patience
3. Point of View
4. Passion
5. Challenge
6. Courage

His talk expanded on each of these, illustrated by his beautiful images. I’m not going to write any more (though I did make copious notes) as you should either go and see him speak or buy one of his books.

I did love some of his quotes however, especially:

“It’s not a question of what you are photographing; it’s a question of what you are feeling.”

“A picture of something is different from a picture about something. The difference is your point of view.”

“Photography is a human challenge. It’s not a technical challenge.”

“Find an obsession that is not your camera. Gear is in service to something.”

David duChemin, The Photography Show, 2025

I found David’s talk truly inspirational and it made the whole trip worthwhile. Next year TPS is back at the NEC near Birmingham. Hopefully they will have a few speakers of the calibre of David then as well.