last week i attended vmware’s annual conference, vmworld 2009. since i am doing so much shooting this year, i decided to bring my widelux f7 camera with me to the conference. by carrying it with me, i managed to meet a lot of photographers there, including many who shoot (including one 4×5 guy!). the conference ended up being a good venue for shooting, despite the low light levels.

after registration, you walk down moscone center’s wonderful staircase down to a long line of shiny new infrastructure that is running the show.

the keynotes were large productions. giant projected video screens. the large video cameras looked quite sophisticated. i took a peak in one that was near the stage. on the screen it artificially marked all hard edges in the scene.

the camera operator and the attendee behind him both noticed my camera, and i talked to them both about my widelux. the attendee had a horizon camera (also a swing-lens panoramic) but didn’t think of bringing any film cameras to the conference. i don’t blame him. it was at this point that i realized i must be the only one of 12,800 conference attendees carrying a light meter.

the first lab session i attended was vSphere 4 – New Features, Best of, Advanced Features. there was quite a hiccup in the lab infrastructure and a lot of time was wasted. this of course started a flurry of bad things being said over twitter and blogs. vmware managed to solve most of the problems and had late-night repeat sessions for those who wanted to repeat labs that had broken. the gentleman i paired up with for the lab was a manager and didn’t seem to be interested in much hands-on experience, so i was able to drive and go pretty fast through the material.

this is dan chu, vp of emerging products and markets, from vmware. he’s about to start a panel discussion about extending information technology beyond the traditional data center (the cloud). a bit too high level for me.

the scale of vmworld was pretty immense. this is the self-paced lab room, a huge room full of thin clients with a row of supporting infrastructure up front. the conference staff was nice enough to let me in specially to take pictures.

one of the meal rooms. i estimated about 1,500 seats in this room.

these guys are david baldwin (our technical account manager) and martin klaus (my speaking session owner). they’re stationed at the lab manager kiosk in the vmware booth. in the evening, the expo area was catered as people scatter around learning about new products and getting their badges scanned to receive more information (in exchange for gifts like tshirts, stress balls, and ball-point pens adorned with logos).

by the end of the conference, there was a day/evening of relaxation. retro game stations, air hockey and shuffleboard, food and drink, and rock climbing. the conference ended with a live performance by foreigner.

i’d never imaged taking a picture at a concert with the widelux. i had a few frames left in the camera, had my light meter with me, and thought.. what the heck. meter the stage, hold the camera pretty high, and burn the rest of the roll and see what happens.

all images are taken with the widelux f7, on arista premium 400 rated at iso 6400. developed in rodinal 1+50 for 45 minutes with agitation every 3 minutes.