Who are you and why are you here? | Peter Verdone Designs

2017 NAHBS. March 10-14, 2017.

I wasn’t sure about going to NAHBS this year. I’ve had a very busy year building a few new bikes. I got married. It’s been a good ski season. Money has been running a bit thin. I didn’t see that my usual trip, taking nice detail photos (2016, 2014, 2012, etc), was needed or worth the expense and time this year.

With a couple weeks to go before the show, I put a shout out to see if I could, at least, get a cheap room for a night if I flew out Friday morning and back Saturday evening. Ron Andrews spoke up and set my ball in motion.

Still, I didn’t want to take photos. I’m a bit tired of image processing right now. A summer trip to DC to visit with my father left me with a monster photo project. The images from The National Air and Space Museum are amazing. Processing over 1,100 images wore me down and took a lot of time. Thus, no photos this year.

Below are the only to photos I took at the show. It was right when I arrived and walked into the Anvil booth. Folks were hanging out and this guy had a great belt buckle.

Because I like to have a project going, or learn something when I’ve got the chance, I resurrected a project that I had originally planned for the Charlotte (2014) show. I’ve wanted to do some interviews for several years but it didn’t ever come about. Making personal connections (and not pissing people off) is not my strongest skill and I kept shirking last minute each time I had tried to get this going again. I still had the cheap digital recorder but decided to also order a proper unidirectional microphone (just $13 on Amazon) and I’m glad I did. The focused range of the mic made a great difference in the sound quality in the noisy room.

Walking into the show on Friday morning, I immediately spotted the perfect candidate to pop my interview cherry. Carl Strong! I’d never done a formal recorded interview with anyone in my life and he would be my first. It was fun. I had a fumble with the recorder. I mistakenly stopped the recording mid interview. I learned some things right away on my feet and I moved on to my next interviewee.

I was lucky and am thankful that so many people were willing and interested to talk with me, taking the time during this busy show. It’s a very cool place: NAHBS.

I have a lot to learn about interviewing, audio recording, and editing but I’m sure you can bear with my inexperience to hear the great things that these people are saying. Looking back on what I accomplished and what was produced, I regret not taking a few Playboy Interview-style image sets of the people I spoke with. That would have been a nice addition.