Death of the Exhibition ?

Many years ago if you were a bit of a show off and wanted to let the world know what you'd been up to in your spare time, then there were two options, get into print or take your models to an exhibition. These days there's an easier way, and you're looking at it. However the interweb would be nothing without pictures and the digital camera both compliments the net and expands the ease with which one can get into the model press as well.

My simple, relatively cheap and frankly outmoded compact digital camera allows me to mount both a show and tell campaign here and produce photos of a good enough quality to be accepted for publication in the modelling press. I don't fool myself that my images are as good as those taken by the regular magazine staff photographers but they do allow step by step workbench shots to be undertaken, also living in the sticks many hours from anywhere would make for a long day for the paid snapper. Now to get a usable shot may take many attempts, I'm always in awe of the few shots the professionals take and the high success rate they achieve, but doing it digitally encourages one to keep bashing away till the results please.

 

Very good but what about the exhibition I hear you ask. Well, big layouts and exhibitions are a bit of a pain. Building a big layout so it can be broken down into manageable chunks takes far more time and a bit more money than constructing it in one unmovable piece. With the digital age giving easing the sharing of ones endeavours will we see a tail off layouts being made available for shows? Small layouts though easier to transport still become more complex when built to do so, and then we get into the sheer hard work that attending an exhibition can be. Though it's undoubtedly enjoyable when aggregated out, the frayed tempers, the stress when the toys go 'tech' and the last day's unseemly scrum to get out through the door do make me wonder if some wouldn't prefer to stay at home and just post photos and videos online.

What will the next ten years bring, will we see a decline in the number of exhibitions? Well I think I detect a growing number of big layouts built for home use only. Morfa would be a bugger to build in transportable format, hugely expensive to take on the road and potentially disappointing as many of it's best viewing angles are from inside the operating well.

Scattergun

Morfa will be a long time coming; when one man tries to fill a big space with hand built models it's inevitable. Reading the railway press it would seem that most layouts are tackled in layers, beginning with the baseboards, working one's way through track, wiring, landscape, coming to a conclusion with with buildings and details. I've an idea that when looked at by the time and motion men this would probably be judged  the most efficient/fastest method. Morfa could daunt if tackled this way, and many of the creative choices stifled at an unnecessarily early stage. I've deliberately gone scattergun, bringing to completion many of the small component parts that will go to make up the whole without much care about their chronological necessity. I therefore find myself with half finished 'proper' track, jury rigged wiring, baseboards lacking the front profile sections, yet some completed structures and road vehicles. By breaking the workload down into manageable chunks measurable progress can be greater than the glacial pace of the whole .....

Transit van (detailed and repainted Trackside) and garage (converted Airfix kit)

MGB (repainted and detailed Cararama) and lock up shop (scratchbuilt in plasticard).

.... but I mainly do this because it pleases me.