Directly following an early-morning marathon shoot for brightroom, Matt and I drove out to Las Vegas for “The [photography] industry’s biggest convention and trade show,” WPPI Con, which is annually held at Paris and Bally’s.
We took my car, but like a champ and a true gentleman, Matt chauffeured. It might have had something to do with the fact that I’d been up since 5am and eventually fell asleep in the passenger seat.
Monday I was hoping to see Kevin Kubota and Doug Gordon divulge the “Top 50 Trade Secrets,” but it filled to overcapacity very quickly, despite being held at 8:30am. I count myself lucky because at least I’ve seen Kubota speak before, at a PPC show, he’s excellent, and as a lover, user, and abuser of Photoshop I’m a HUUUUUUUGE fan of his actions.
Just by using and experimenting with his actions and settings
I have actually learned a great deal about Photoshop itself.
I aspire to be just like him one day, 
!
from his Image Tools trade show booth!
I wandered around and took in all the lovely features of the trade show. Gary Fong has unveiled a new flash diffuser called the WhaleTail based on improvements he’s made to his famous Lightspheres (I admittedly own one, and yes, now I do want a WhaleTail, too). Apparently he kept in mind all the online forum suggestions and complaints about his Lightsphere when designing the new diffuser.
In addition to publicly announcing the release of Creative Suite 3, Adobe demonstrated the superior batch processing and organizational functions of Lightroom. As a LR user myself, I was thrilled to learn more about its capabilites at some of the trade show workshops right in the Adobe booth.
BluDomain was selling all their website templates for a show-special of $400. I’m rather hoping to win one via one of their blog contests, however 
I also saw Bob Davis speak about photojournalism in wedding photography, but the session turned into more of a multiple-strobe tutorial, which was fine because it was something I needed to learn more about eventually. He mounts one to two flash units on stands with Lightspheres attached and uses them as additional light sources when he shoots. It’s nothing entirely original, but as a shooter for TIME magazine and other non-bridal venues, it was interesting to hear about ways he utilized the method. Another flash unit (the Nikon SB-800) is on my list.
There were also some fantastic images in the print competition gallery. I took a couple photos of some with my phone, but they were all incredibly inspiring. I have to say I was intrigued by the style of jesh de rox, whoever that is. California portrait and wedding photo style is decidedly bright, clear, clean, crisp, and colorful, so it was refreshing to see the artistic antithesis of that in his washed-out, vintage-ish, almost cross-processed looking works. I was duly impressed.
At last, I found myself in the WPPI Champagne Shootout, which involved “four pros, four shooting tracks, four big screens and four distinct points of view—plus ice cream sundaes … Photographers: Mike Colón, Charles Maring, Kirk Voclain, and Yervant Zanazanian.”
I admired the pros’ work, ate too much ice cream, and decided that thirteen hours in Paris and Bally’s was enough and left. Matt and I were staying at the Stratosphere…or rather, I should say Matt was staying at the Stratosphere, I just slept there.
Yesterday we drove back, encountering some bizarre weather including blasting wind, rain, and even snow in Nevada’s high desert.
Desert blizzard up in the El Cajon Pass.
Rain
We made a pit stop in Barstow and there was a caboose sitting in a public park next to the gas station. I thought the color would be great to get some texture shots to use with a little Photoshop “bleach”:
Fun’s over, now it’s back to work.
