2012 AAW symposium - Day 3

Sunday of the AAW symposium is always difficult for me. It's not because of the long hours kept during the weekend, it's because I have to say goodbye to all my friends. I love spending time with my woodturning buddies - it's like one big happy reunion for three or four days of fun. Then Sunday rolls around and the farewells begin. I don't like that part at all....

The photography task I assigned to myself was a challenge. I took a lot of environmental portraits and action shots during the first couple of days, so for Sunday I wanted to do intimate portraits of hands at work. I photographed the hands of Dixie Biggs, Mike Lee, and Paul Fennell carving, and Stuart Mortimer, Mike Jakofsky, Jean-François Escoulen, and Eli Avisera at the lathe. These are amongst my favorite photos of the weekend and I'm looking forward to processing the raw files. I also did some still life shots of work tables and tools - always fun to do.

The kids in the youth program picked up their lathe packages after lunch. I was in the room to capture some of that action, and it is such a touching scene. I had a few tears in my eyes as I watched the kids say goodbye to the volunteers who had mentored them all weekend. I know I've said it before, but this is really one of the best programs AAW has to offer the woodturning community. These kids are the future of woodturning, and it's great that Powermatic/Jet Tools, Technatool, Crown Tools, and Woodcraft are so generous in contributing equipment and tools for the program.

I also did some street photography of the tear down of the trade show. It's pretty amazing that this event comes together so quickly and disappears just as fast. I hope the vendors are going home considerably lighter in inventory.

I'll be spending the next couple of weeks sorting, filing, backing up, and processing raw images into high resolution jpegs. Betty Scarpino, editor of American Woodturner, will have first dibs on what I consider my best shots. These and another 200 or so images will appear on the AAW website and facebook page. The rest will appear here on my blog, my woodturning facebook page, or Google+. So stay tuned for photos - I promise they will be up for viewing pretty soon.