10 February 2006
Schools photographers and lab owners will hear about the latest developments in their industry at a conference being staged for them in Coventry in July.
The conference is being organised by the Professional Schools Photographers Association, part of PMA International.
PMA UK director Nigel McNaught said that technological development had affected schools photography just as much as photography in general.
"It's also a very competitive business so if schools photographers are to stay that all-important one jump ahead, it's crucial that those involved in the industry, either as photographers or in the labs, are kept right up to date," he said.
The conference programme, which is still being finalised, will include challenging business and marketing presentations by a number of leading lights in the industry, and there will also be technical sessions on the use of green screen technology, advanced auto-retouching portrait software, internet ordering systems and other state of the art tools.
Alongside the PSPA event will be a conference for Professional Photo Labs Association members, many of whom offer processing and printing services for schools photographers.
The PPLA conference will present the findings of a business benchmarking scheme and delegates will be invited to help with the setting of key bench marks for their own labs and organisations of similar sizes.
The benchmarking programme has already started with a lot of the preparation work carried out by Ron Barber of Prolab Consulting. He has already carried out business "audits" at a number of labs as a start to setting the bench mark standards.
Labs attending the conference can help with this project and at the same time find out how their businesses stack up against their competitors with a service health check from Ron for a PPLA subsidised fee £99.00 against the normal cost of £399.00.
Details of the programme for the PSPA and the PPLA Conferences, which take place at the Coventry Hilton on July 12th, will shortly be available via the PMA website, www.pmai.org.
To register for the event or to find out more about being part of the benchmarking exercise call PMA on 0870 240 4542 or email tchapman@pmai.org.
http://www.pmai.org/international/united_kingdom/uk_default.htm