Thursday, March 29, 2007

Back From Vegas!



a message found on the refrigerator just this afternoon...




Kate runs through the bedroom wearing a vintage, Italian-made outfit from the 60s that Nicki and her brother Andy wore while growing up in S. Africa.




Sidewalk Superintendent...Kate watches the gardeners do their work through the front window...


Vegas was, as always, quite an experience.

It's one of those things that sometimes take a while to digest as while you're there it's almost a whirlwind effect because there's so much coming at you.

On Monday afternoon I presented at the Canon booth as part of their Explorers of Light program. It was great to see some familiar faces in the audience.

Trade show presenting is quite unique especially when you compare it to doing a 4 or 5 day seminar or an evening event where you are the featured presenter.

At the trade show the presentation has to be a bit different (more bold, perhaps?) the limited time frame (45 minutes in this case) the message has to be condensed and very specific. It was a lot of fun [and Steve Inglima from Canon made some images of me on the podium which I'm hoping to get for Kate & Nicki to see (and maybe post here)] -- even if I did feel I was sweating more than Albert Brooks in "Broadcast News"!

That night I attended a WPPI session where my friend Greg Gibson was presenting.

Greg's a former news photographer like me, having spent the bulk of his editorial career in Washington covering the White House first for AFP (Agence France Presse) and then the Associated Press (AP). Greg is one helluva shooter, a two time Pulitzer Prize winner, and a great guy.

Greg was introduced by Matt Mendelsohn, another former news photographer turned wedding shooter (Matt had a jump on both of us) and is terrifically talented as well.

And, as his introduction of Greg that night showed, he's almost as good of a writer as he is a photographer.

It was great to be there to hear Greg speak, and then hang out with a couple of long time friends and buddies.

We all came of age, so to speak, photographically in our 20s in Washington and it's amazing how much of a bond that common background is reflected in our work and our humor.

Tuesday morning, bright and early, I had my Digital Wedding Forum talk at 8:30 a.m. What was I thinking agreeing to that, I ask?? ;-)

Actually it was a good thing and I was very stoked to see about 125 souls who braved the early morning hours (yep, that's early for Vegas) and attended. And they were an incredibly gracious audience -- thank you all!

It was a kick to share some of my journalism images, as well as some of my current and past wedding work and talk about moments, lens selection, and using flash in ways to capture life as it happens.

So thanks to the great folks at Canon, Jeff Caplan at the DWF for asking me to present. It was fun!

At noon I was part of the DWF Mentoring program that pairs photographers with members of the DWF community who want to spend 30 minutes talking with a fellow photographer. There was a fee for this which was donated to the charity called
The Vision for Tomorrow Foundation, which seemed like a very cool thing to do.

I had four sessions with four very unique and wonderful people and it was an honor to be selected by them for this. My hope is that they found the sessions useful and helpful to them in their situations. I am anxious to hear what happens to each one of them throughout the course of the year.

Well, time to give Kate her bath and put her to sleep...she had a two hour nap today--the second time this week (Hallalujah as Nicki would say) so maybe we're on the road to a 2-3 hour afternoon nap? We can only dream...

;-)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home