Last week was Photoshop World in Las Vegas. This was the eighth Photoshop World I have attended as an instructor and my tenth overall. It is a fantastic conference that I think every photographer or digital artist should go to art least once. There was a lot of great product news from Adobe and Wacom, I taught some classes including a Concert Photography workshop and a Night / Low light class. Thank you to everyone who came to both. I really appreciate it.

This blog post is a recap of my time in Las Vegas, and while I took a couple of photos, I really tried to put the camera down this time and actually just enjoy myself.

I checked into the Mandalay Bay on Monday night and was greeted with this view out of my window. 

It was time to run out for a bite to eat with Scott Diussa, my co-instructor for the concert workshop. As usual, we ended up at the Irish pub where Scott had the traditional Guinness and I went with the Carlsberg. The Guinness was a way better subject to shoot. I was using a D5200 with the 40mm f/2.8 micro lens. Worked great.

On Monday morning the in-depth workshops kicked off. Scott and I had a great crowd for our concert workshop and by the time we took them to the live shoot, they were eager to get shooting.

After the workshop ended, Scott and I packed up, headed out to dinner, then another meeting for desert and then back to the hotel for a meet up at the Eye Candy bar. We also had to be there until 10:15pm so that we could make sure we got all the contest entries in. Then the hard work started… we had to pick the three finalists for the photo contest from the workshop. It took a while. We had the most entries ever and they were all really solid shots. We finally narrowed it down to the final three. I created the slides for the Keynote that would kick off the conference the next morning. That meant I was at the keynote at 6:30am.

The plus side to being at the keynote early is that I got to see Adobe rehearse and watch how the Kelby folks get the whole thing up and running.

The following shot was taken on the keynote stage when Scott and I went up on stage to give away the Nikon D800 prize. A really unique view.

After a day of classes, meetings, and portfolio reviews I headed out dinner with another instructor and then off to the after hours party. Everyone has a great time at the House of Blues. Glyn Dewis has some great moves on the dance floor and Scott Diussa shredded with the band. Fun night.

I went out late on Thursday night to get some photos to use in a class on night and low light photography I was teaching on Friday. I wanted to get some shots of the Bellagio without the water show, with a longer shutter speed to get the water smooth.

This was the view from my room on the Friday evening. It was time to pack. I headed out to dinner with Glyn Dewis, Frank Doorhof, his wife and mother and a friend. It was a great end to a great week.

After dinner, I headed down to Freemont street with some of the Kelby video crew. But that is a story for another day…

The view through my airplane window as I said goodbye to Nevada and another Photoshop World.

I love landing in San Diego… Good to be home.

Photoshop World 2014 is in Atlanta in April…