I am back home and almost settled in from last week’s Photoshop World in Orlando, Florida. It was a great time and was everything I hoped it would be. The only major bummer was that I got sick on the first day with some type of sinus thing and didn’t feel well much of the time. I still don’t feel that good but hoping being back home will speed up my recovery.

Here are some of the highlights of the trip.

Pre-Conference

Tuesday was pre-con day for the event. These are half and full day classes on a particular topic. You are able to get pretty deep into your topics, more so than the usual hour long classes during the rest of the conference.

I choose to do the Concert Photography session. This was led by Alan Hess and Scott Diussa. Alan is an accomplished concert and event shooter from San Diego. His portfolio is impressive and a real cool cat.

Scott works for Nikon Professional Services and also shoots concerts as well as being an excellent musician, himself.

After many hours in class we got to shoot Scott Kelby’s band, Big Electric Cat at the expo center. We were also made aware that Nikon would award a new D300s and lens for the best shot from the session.

It was a blast shooting the band and I really got into the music. So much so that it was a little distracting from the job at hand to get the shots. You have to wear ear plugs that close to the stage but they sounded great and everyone had a good time.

Back to the contest.....

I did not have my normal imaging editing tools with me so I quickly had to download the Lightroom 3 Beta from Adobe labs that evening to process my Raw images. You could only submit 1 so I did some quick ratings and narrowed down to a few I really liked. From there I chose the 1 and sent off to Alan and Scott for consideration.

Below are some shots I did not choose for my submission but ones I did like.

The plan was for Scott and Alan to pick the best 3 and the keynote audience, all 3000 of them, would select the winner the next morning.

Wednesday

Wednesday started early as the keynote is something that cannot be missed. I was excited to see what Scott Kelby had planned and was sure it was going to be a good show.

I was seated close to the stage as I was also a finalist for the Guru award in the artistic category for my image, “A Midnight Pair”.

A Midnight Pair

They started with Scott and the guys playing a classic KISS song with photoshop lyrics in full wardrobe and make-up. They sounded unbelievable. The theme of the whole conference was a Rock show and was very well produced throughout.

After they left stage it was time to announce the winner of the concert shoot. Alan and Scott Diussa came on stage and showed the final 3 on the big screens. I was excited to see my image was one of the finalist.

The went through each image and asked the audience to vote by applause for the best. Yep, I won. I was yelling pretty loud for mine but was very nice to hear all the cheers from the audience. I went back stage and up to receive the new camera.

Went quickly back to my seat cause the Guru awards were about to be announced. This was already voted on by folks back at NAPP and others so no need for audience voting. I didnt win - but was a real honor to even be selected. All the finalist in the Guru awards had their images on display at the event. Here is one of me looking tired with no sleep on lots of sinus meds.

The rest of the day was spent in the classrooms and in the expo hall. The vendor expo opened later in the day and plenty of awesome products, gear and live training going on.

Thursday and Friday

The rest of the week was spent in the classrooms going from session to session and spending some time in the expo hall. I really liked all the classes I went to especially those by Zack Arias. I also met lots of fellow photographers and had a couple good conversations with Rick Sammon and Scott Kelby.

The photoshop guys taping a live episode of Photoshop User TV