Frank’s photo nerd LAN party

I don’t know about “emerging trend in an emerging market,” but I can’t resist linking to Microsoft Research Asia’s Frank Yu’s must-read post about what took place in a Beijing park on a recent sunny afternoon. Imagine a bunch of guys with fancy cameras going wild taking photos of girls they’ve invited to model for them…now imagine several of these groups together.  Now imagine various wedding parties also taking photos in the same park.  Got the picture?

Although we had 3 models of our own, more often we would run into other groups (koreans, chinese, etc)  in the park with their own models and take pictures of theirs and they would take pictures of ours. Our group would take pictures of ANYONE in the park who looked like they were worth taking pictures of.

At the end of the day, all the groups converged into one photo feeding frenzy as groups took pictures of everyone and everything in the line of fire. Our models posed with their models and we posed them near walls, bushes statues and whatever. Its almost an  unspoken understanding that all subjects were fair game o no one bothered to ask if it was alright to take a picture of them anyway.

Everyone seemed to have a good time and the event had a feel of a good LAN party as the brotherhood of geek photographers came away with pictures, training and some e-mails of pretty models.