I learned two very valuable things at the Microsoft Pro Photography Summit.

1. Type written notes shrink to the point of being unreadable as soon as you walk on a stage.
2. I should drink a martini before speaking to a large group of people about a highly controversial subject.

The Microsoft Pro Photography Summit revealed some extraordinary technologies that are currently evolving for photographers. When I wasn’t on stage I sat next to uber shooter Brian Smith and we calmly and collectively wet our pants over some of the things we saw.

To give you and idea of the level of genius, there is software that uses GPS data to map the positions of buildings in cityscape so that it can remove the haze from a photograph shot on a less than ideal day. By knowing the position of the buildings the software can effectively discern noise particles from particles that lend themselves to the the image.

Another speaker who I found captivating was Miss Aniela. A girl from Brighton, England who started shooting self portraiture and placing the images on photo sharing site flickr. She has parlayed a hobby into a full blown career that has resulted in, so far, two international gallery openings. All the exposure came as a result of being involved in an online community.

The event was highly successful and interesting. I’ll post a summary of my presentation next week as soon as I can secure some video and we get the infrastructure in place to commence the grand experiment that I promised to the audience.