Practical Photography

Microsoft are holding an exclusive invite only Pro Photo Summit which started yesterday and continues today. Microsoft have held this now for three years in a row with speeches from Microsofts CTO David Vaskevitch and are rumoured to be talking about Microsofts stock photography (microstock) and speeches from Adobe.

This is the third year that Microsoft has held a Pro Photo Summit, so I’m not entirely sure that this event is predictive of any change in Microsoft strategy towards photography per se. This is the first year that I’m going, though, and I’m excited to check out what Microsoft has in store to share with us.
Yesterday saw a talk on  Presidential photography campaign from Melina Mara at the Washington Post presentations on the Microsoft Research groups.

As a photographer and a designer I have always been an Apple lover (no not the fruit and veg) but Macintosh, I ‘ve found them much more compatible with Photo editing and layouts for print although web designers have often argued Microsoft are the best for designing websites?

For Photography Microsoft was never really a contender and since Apples release of Aperture earlier this year the gap has increased between the two main competitors. But perhaps Microsoft have realised this gap in the market and decided to up their game?

Earlier this year Microsoft bought Webfives the photosharing site that was once known as Vizrea, rumours of Microsoft taking over Yahoo and flickr are perhaps why they have delayed developing something themselves.

Lets see what they have up their sleeves and maybe something will leak from this seminar.