…with a few friends for the new Epson Print Academy in Miami!
Now we get to try some Miami Vice…

And thank goodness I’ll be getting out of Chicago for sunny Miami-it better not rain!

Dallas was a great success-even if the Track Two room was overcrowded and the darn hotel wanted us out on time-imagine that? I won’t bother you with the details of the Epson Print Academy event, if you want to know more, just check out the Print Academy web site. But I thought I would post some pics (some less embarrasing than others) to let you know what we did. Thankfully the Marriott had a Starbucks in the lobby-I got to start the day with a 5 shot venti mocha-I even got JP to try a 5 shot latte! We were good to go!

Here we are in Dallas-at the Dallas Marriott Solana-which was a lot better than I feared…except for one little detail. Seems the ballroom was double booked by the hotel and we had to get out earlier than planned. Sorry about that-won’t happen again!

Registration was, well, a LOT MORE than expected-we had over 140 in the track two room.

In addition to the expo area, Epson had a variety of prints by the Epson Stylus Pro’s, a group of top photographers all using Epson printers.

This is Vincent Versace impersonating some movie star-I think it was Billy Crystal, but I’m not sure (he sure LOOKED like Billy, huh?)

There were representatives from Epson as well as Imaging Spectrum who provided the printers for the Track Two (the pro session). The guys at Imaging Spectrum looked a bit shocked at how many people were there!

But they recovered their shock and handled demos and had lots of printers on hand. Thanks guys.

Wacom had a Cintiq to play with-nice!

The guys from SoLux had some pretty nice full spectrum lights to inspect. Makes digital prints look great…

Adobe had some reps there…there was a lot of talk about Adobe Lightroom. George Jardine will be joining us in Miami and demoing Lightroom. George is the Adobe Pro Photography Evangelist and was heavily involved in the development of Lightroom. See the PSN story: The Shadowland/Lightroom Development Story

NAPP & Photoshop User Magazine were there too.

John Omvik from Lexar was there…sorry no free 4 gig cards :~(

Parker Plaisted from nik multimedia was there-Parker used work at Epson so it was like old buds getting together again.

NEC had a line up of LCD displays and the new NEC LCD LED display-Adobe RGB and REALLY bright-sunscreen bright!

I had Adobe Lightroom loaded on a G5 and hooked up to the LED display-made for a great view of some on my Antarctica images.

GTI brought some high-end viewing booths and we used it to display the poster done for the Print Academy.

X-rite was there showing the Pulse system and the DTP-70 which we used to linearize the 4800 printer in the Track Two room.

Light Impressions had a display of archival supplies.

Greg Gorman always likes to get a front row seat-he even takes notes!

Here’s the always “colorful” Bruce Fraser-out in public again and talking with his hands (again).

Notice Greg, Mac and JP sitting in the front row? They are there to learn at the feet of Bruce (actually, we wanted to introduce everybody at the beginning so they had to get up early anyway).

I was up next-I think JP got this really flattering shot of me (thanks JP). The poster at the GTI booth was done using the Epson branded ColorBurst rip to prove you CAN proof CMYK color accurately-I even signed the posters.

The guys still hung around-obviously wishing to steal more of my material!

This is a bald head view of Bruce and JP at lunch.

There was plenty of time to walk the exhibits-even if it did get crowded. But the Track One and Track Two sessions had alternating break times so the pros could wander unmolested.

Ok, I’m REALLY not sure what JP was talking about-but you know those Italians-the only way to shut them up is to tape their hands together.

JP did a great session with lots of tips. I failed in my PSN duty to get any fun shots of Greg Gorman and Mac Holbert speaking-I must have been distracted by the material guys, sorry.

On the left is Dan (Dano) Steinhardt doing the Dano Waddle (he walks that way when he’s really tired). Dano is the guy at Epson that puts on the show (as well as has to deal with all his flock of photographers in the Stylus Pro’s). On the right is Steve Struve’s cast that he earned on the Antartica expedition-he took a tumble and saved his cameras but busted his wrist-he kept shooting though!

Steve, who is quite the wine expert (he runs South-Tex Wine Distributors, Inc., a fine wine wholesaler in Texas for boutique restaurants and retail outlets) arranged to get us all in at Del Frisco’s Steak House on a Saturday night-not an easy thing. He even arranged to have us bussed enmass to the restuarant-which is a GOOD THING since the odds are, we wouldn’t have wanted to drive back to the Marriott!

Great food and wine…

…and more wine.

All that was left of a bone-in ribeye. Even Bruce, normally a vegetarian had some beef! (he does look like he’s sneaking it in, huh?)

And, of course, where you have one photographer with a camera, you always seem to have a photographer taking a shot of the other photographer-this time Mac Holbert.

Did I mention the wine? On the right, JP and Vinnie try to decide on dessert. Dessert wine that is…

On the trip back, I caught guys with their eyes closed (left) and another shot of Bruce’s head and JP’s nose-sorry guys.

Greg always hams it up for the camera-no really, he didn’t have TOO much wine. Parker always giggles when you point a camera at him.

Mac gets revenge. What are the odds that Mac and I would both shoot at the EXACT same moment? Here’s a shot he got of me. It’s that squinty-eyed, get that camera out of my face look I copied from Jack Nicholson.

Poor Steve has had to wear his cast since last December. All day he looked like he was asking questions. Steve waved good bye (with his good arm). Thanks for arranging dinner Steve!

Now, on to Miami…you guys down there better look out-the Epson Road Show is coming. I can’t guarantee I’ll be taking more shots at the event-but if I can get any really embarassing shots, I might! PSN will probably be dark until next Wednesday, February 1st. when my wife and I return-we’re staying a few days extra to soak up some sun in South Beach and hook up with Seth Resnick. So, unless the hotel has WiFi by the pool or on the beach, I prolly won’t be doing much posting, ya know?

After Miami, we’ll be going to Boston on February 11th. Ok, Boston in February ain’t such a hot deal…but we’ll be there!

This story was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Events, PSN Editorials. You can follow any responses to this story through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.