Responding to member and industry demands, the Australian Institute of Professional Photography will host two major events a year rather than running one big annual event.
This year the Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPA) will run as a standalone event in August, and the AIPP national conference will take place over two days in May 2018.
The conference, formerly The Nikon Event, has been rebranded as Lenscape due to the AIPP’s new ‘non exclusivity’ policy for event sponsorship, which resulted in Nikon withdrawing naming sponsorship.
Last year the AIPP ran an ambitious five day event in Melbourne called Incite, combining its two major events – APPA and The Nikon Event.
Before Incite, APPA took place at The Digital Show trade expo, run by the Imaging & Digital Entertainment Association (IDEA).
The two events went hand in hand.
APPA brought attendees to The Digital Show, who sat in on the judging and enjoyed the art. The Digital Show provided a stage to host APPA.
However the final Digital Show was in Melbourne, 2015.
‘The Digital Show gave people an expectation and a belief that APPA was accompanied by a relatively large scale photographic trade show. So we attempted last year to have a trade show to mimic what people were used to with The Digital Show,’ Peter Myers, AIPP executive officer, explained to ProCounter. ‘Well, it didn’t work – so we’re moving back to the previous model of having APPA on one date and the national conference on another date.’
Myers said Incite failed because members were unable to take an entire week off work.
‘We thought that by combining the two events we’d save them travel expenses for the two major events. What we were told is that members would rather pay for two lots of travel, than take five or six continuous days out of their business.’
APPA will run over three days in late August at the Melbourne Park Function Centre. So far Olympus and AON Insurance are the event’s Platinum sponsors, with another likely to be announced soon.
While Nikon has withdrawn its naming sponsorship of the AIPP national conference, it will continue to support Lenscape and APPA at a different level.
Lenscape will take place over two days at the Sea World Resort on the Gold Coast in May 2018.
The program has not been revealed, but it will be made up of two ‘threads’ – Professional Development, with content aimed at new AIPP members; and Professional Involvement, with content aimed at more experienced members.
The AIPP will begin to secure event sponsorship for Lenscape following APPA.
World Cup comes to Australia
At Lenscape, the AIPP will host the World Photographic Cup (WPC) Awards Ceremony.
The WPC is a photo contest run with a formula similar to the Olympics. Countries compete against other countries, and professional photographers enter photos into categories.
Category winners are given medals, and those medals are tallied to determine which country wins. Portugal has won the last two years.
The WPC was founded in 2013 as a cooperative effort by the Federation of European Photographers and Professional Photographers of America, and is supported by the AIPP and United Asian Professional Photography association.
‘The brotherhood and sisterhood of photography is a bond that transcends language, culture, and geography. That’s the foundation behind the World Photographic Cup, an one of a kind international team competition. Sure, there are lots of other competitions, but there is just one World Photographic Cup.’
– APPA will take place at Melbourne Park Function Centre from August 25-27
– Lenscape will take place at Sea World World on the Gold Coast from May 5-6