American Cranes and Transport, April 2020 Cover

Trying to capture the scope of a trade show on the scale of ConExpo really requires some height. To tell the story of the size of the show, I’ve shot from parking garages, rooftops, hotel rooms and exhibit scaffolding.

Over the weekend prior to the show, I shot what I hoped would be a cover image from an adjacent parking garage rooftop, after getting permission from the very nice manager of the hotel that owned it (trespassing to get a shot is not advised, especially in Las Vegas). Nice light, most of the crane lot in frame. Only one problem, most of the show was not in nice light and if you attended the show you probably didn’t see the blue skies of the weekend. The image that was actually was chosen by my editor was shot by me out a hotel window of the Sahara Hotel across the street from the crane lot right after one of the rainstorms that confronted us during the first few days of the show. And yes that’s the parking garage in the distance where I shot what I thought would be the cover….

The Last Tradeshow in America….for awhile

ConExpo is the largest equipment trade show in the United States. Held every three years, in open lots around the Las Vegas Convention Center, it normally draws visitors from all over the world. I have attended ConExpo for almost three decades and shot the last four shows for American Cranes and Transport. Going into the show, the big challenge was that the old lot where most of the cranes were displayed had been sacrificed for the Convention Center expansion. Having shot three shows at the old location, I had a pretty good idea how the light moved throughout the day across the lot and where I needed to be to make the best use of it with the various exhibits. And I had my shooting notes from the previous shows. All that went out the window as the cranes moved to a new “temporary” lot about 1/4 mile away.

With COVID-19 at its infancy in the U.S., I arrived on March 6th and spent the weekend prior to the show, watching the light while avoiding being flattened by the flurry of forklifts and activity as the last minute preparations were made to the exhibits. The weekend was beautiful and had great light. Then for the first time that I can remember at a ConExpo, the weather went downhill fast and we opened the show to rain. Over the course of the week, the COVID-19 count in the U.S. climbed rapidly and ConExpo made the national news as the “last trade show being held in the U.S”. Most of the shooting opportunities were crammed into the last two of five show days because of weather and the show ended up closing a day early as the seriousness of the COVID-19 crisis became apparent.

I love the challenge of shooting trade shows of this magnitude and telling the story. With poor weather and COVID-19, I found the challenge amped up to an extreme. This is the scene that greeted me in the first 5 minutes of the show walking onto the crane lot.

Whitetail

One of the things that wildlife photography takes is patience and an investment of time. You may get lucky in the first hour of shooting or you may go home without an image after putting hours into the effort. This past weekend was a classic wildlife experience. I was in West Texas on a 12, 000 acre ranch with the primary goal of capturing whitetail images. But there is no guarantee that one is going to be successful. Spent 3 days and a total of 23 hours in various parts of the ranch without much to show for it and then in hour 24 this 10 point whitetail came out of the woods following a doe to exactly one of the spots I had preplanned a shot. Sometimes you get lucky….

American Cranes and Transport – July Issue

Was excited to see the July issue of American Crane and Transport hit the stands today. I was asked to share my experience covering the largest equipment tradeshow in the world as a photographer and the article includes six pages of images I captured during that week in Munich. The editor also decided to go with one of my abstracts for the cover which made this issue even more special.