Photosmudger On the Road

Lurking at my folks' at the moment after a day at Nottingham Trent, here's how it all went:

• Student Turnout - 6/10. Not loads of people, admittedly, though a good turnout for the flash demo in the afternoon.
• Number of questions asked - 8/10. Brilliant, lots of incisive, well thought out questions, both after the talk, and after the flash demo.
• Quality of tea and cakes - 7/10. Huge thanks to Hugh for pampering us all day long with caffeine based drinks.
• Tom's ability to find the toilet - 3/10. This is getting to be an embarassing habit! Mind you, I defy anyone to find their way round the NTU campus without a map or GPS system, it's a bloody maze!
• Number of extra Nikon personnel who were lurking in the background, and then left to go off and fly in helicopters - 2/2. Lucky sods. They claim there won't be space in the choppers for them, and that it's only for the UK press launch of the D3s, but I think they were having me on.
• Ability to Handle the assignment - 7/10. Pretty good attempts - but you'll never get £800 from ID magazine (more's the pity!)
  
• Percentage of students who now know loads more about the inner working of their Nikons, and how to make pretty pictures with flash - 87%. Just couldn't find a way of expressing that as a mark out of 10!

And you'll be glad to hear that "Mini-Zierold" who joined the team back in October, actually has a name, and it's Jemima. Much better than "mini-Zierold" in my opinion!

Derby tomorrow, then, finally, that's it. For now.