I recently visited the Olympus stand at The Professional Imaging event in The Netherlands. Now normally, a stand in an event like this is pretty much the same as any other, except this stand was very special for a number of reasons.
Firstly, Olympus had demonstrations running over the 3 day event featuring the excellent photographers Ronald Koster and Adrian Sommeling. I was fortunate enough to see one of the live demonstrations that Ronald ran, and it was fantastic. A real masterclass in using small lights to create studio quality lighting that had people taking any space they could find to view the demonstration.
Olympus deserve massive kudos for pulling two big names onto their stand. Ronald and Adrian will also be touring with their seminars later this year, with a trip to The UK also taking place. A not to be missed event if you live in The UK as opportunities to see Ronald and Adrian do not come around very often.
Secondly, I got a chance to shoot live with one of the models on The Olympus stage, another thing Olympus went out of their way to give their brand followers the opportunity of doing. I shoot Olympus and used my own equipment, but Olympus also had spare cameras on hand to allow others to shoot with if they didn't already own an Olympus camera.
As if all that wasn't enough, I was then given free of charge, an 8GB memory card and a branded Olympus backpack for no other reason than I owned an Olympus camera!
Talk about going the extra mile. Olympus really are pulling all the stops out, a brand with a great outlook and way of looking after their customers.