I was introduced to Leica by my friend and business partner, Nick Rains. Nick is one of Australia's leading photographers and has been shooting and teaching photography for 30 years. In the coming months Nick, in the role of Principal Instructor, will be conducting a series of seminars, across Australia, under the Leica Akademie banner. If you are interested in all aspects of photography I encourage you to review the seminars offered by the Akademie.
The Leica project involved creating a small iPad app that would allow visitors to the booth to register for a competition via one of two iPad kiosks. A critical issue in the brief was that entries would be automatically recorded and available for export in a .csv format. To accomplish this I used two products, the first was the Oomph tablet publishing platform, used to create the App and TypeForm for the design and creation of the actual form itself and the data management.
Lecia Competition Entry apps
Oomph has an updated feature set that includes some new Kiosk features that make configuration of the app, locked down on an iPad, very simple to implement. Typeform provides an online application to build the coolest forms which are then delivered dynamically, via WiFi, into the app. With everything set up and locked down changes to the form can quickly be made via the Typeform website; the changes are available immediately on the iPad. Typeform tracks all of the entries and provides analysis of the entries and provides tools to export the data in various forms.
I flew down to Melbourne on Wednesday afternoon and by early evening both iPad kiosks were up and running. The exhibition kicked off Thursday morning at 10am and I took the opportunity of the lull before the storm to shoot a 360˚ panorama of the Leica booth. I had to laugh at John Laham, crouching behind the cabinet, shooting off a shot in the panorama.
I must say I wasn't that familiar with Leica equipment until I had the opportunity to see the cameras and lens up close. I'd have to say Leica is an exercise in "understated elegance". The cameras are beautifully made, in fact handmade. The booth represents that understated elegance and is quite distinctive in it's clean uncluttered look unlike other booths that have a tendency to flashy over indulgence.
This is the Equirectangular image that the panorama is created from.
Leica booth PMA 2013 Equirectangular
So if you happen to be going to the exhibition, make sure you pop by the site and say hi to Nick and check out his wonderful gallery of images on the walls of the booth. Don't forget to take a close look at what is an amazing array of equipment.
* PMA, Photo Marketing Association
