I hear there were some good photos taken at the early morning shoot. Sorry – I don’t have any to share. 😉
This morning started with roll call for who was attending from the many clubs from around the country, and then Rochelle Mora from Canon thanked all those involved, and formally opened the PSNZ Canon National Exhibition. 
There was then a surprise in store – and a number of lucky people found envelopes under their chairs which entitled them to prizes from Canon, including the plastic fantastic, Canon 50 mm f1.8 lens. Much excitement (and a bit of prospecting going on under the empty chairs on the other side of the room).
Tony Bridge spoke next, having willingly volunteered to give an extra talk just two days ago. He gave a very thought provoking presentation which had been triggered by taking part in the Natex selection panel. He reflected on how important Honesty and Authenticity are in making our images. He had much more to say about why we make images and how it is really all about a conversation between the photographer and the subject. Great stuff. And thanks to OnOne Software for their support in bringing Tony Bridge here, and for their sponsorship of the Convention.
Following that we saw the excellent images which had placed in Canon Online for the last year, and we recognised Rosemary Morris as the overall winner for the year.
After morning tea, and lots of shopping at the trade shows, it was time for another moving and inspirational talk from Sally Mason. She spoke on the subject of Wabi Sabi. It’s impossible to summarise in a sentence or two what she had to say about this, but it’s essentially about an approach, and about images of the inconspicuous and overlooked aspects of nature, about the fleeting skeletal remains of life, in muted tones rather than images that SHOUT at you. 
Sally concluded with her personal Creed – a very moving statement.
Kelly Swinnerton then presented on behalf of Fujifilm, another valued supported of PSNZ and the Convention. (As a personal and non-sponsored aside, I’m a very happy user of a Fujifilm X-T1, which is being used for all these images.) 
The final part of the morning was showing of all the Natex open and nature projected images, and the successful projected image sets for LPSNZ and APSNZ.