Amanda K. Photography

So as you can see I didn’t post anything on Sunday night.  The trip to Vegas was pretty uneventful.  Our plane was a little late taking off, but when we landed in Vegas it was CRAZY!  There was one tram that took everyone from our terminal to the baggage claim area- ONE people.  As Nathan and I came down the escalator to the tram there was about 400 people all waiting to get on the ONE tram that ran every 5-8 minutes.  Once you were in the middle of that it was like a cattle shoot.  Then we got to our hotel……and here it is……

Looks really magical on the outside right?  I felt like I was staying at Disneyland or something.  First off I’m going to say that this is our first time in Vegas, when we were looking for places to stay, we obviously wanted the cheapest, but nice so that we could spend money on other things.  This hotel is right across the street from the MGM where the convention is happening and we got a KILLER deal, I mean KILLER (5 nights PLUS roundtrip airfare for $287 each) so we booked it.  Well, evidently this is considered the “party” hotel.  Oh well, lesson learned and next year we’ll probably just stay AT the hotel that the convention is at.  As it is, although our hotel is right across the street, it takes about 30 minutes to walk from our room to the convention center.  HEY, at least I’m getting my exercise in!  I think yesterday I walked about 10 miles!

So we got in late Sunday night, my senses were overloaded from the casino area that you have to walk through to register for your room and get to the elevators to the rooms, and we settled into our place.  We got upgraded to a remodeled room so it’s pretty nice.  I’ll take a picture of it for tomorrows post.  It was about 12:30 in the morning, so we decided we were a little hungry from our trip (we left our house at 4pm) so Nate and I ordered room service.  When I called they told me it would be 2-3 hours!!!!  YIKES!  So I upacked all my stuff and we just decided to call it a night.

Monday (yesterday) I got up and got ready to pick up our registration badges and find out where the Shootsac booth was where I’d be working later that day.  Then we got some lunch.  I went back to the Shootsac booth to work and demo the Shootsac.  It was SO fun, and I loved telling people about the features of the Shootsac and show them how it functioned.  It was a CRAZY 3 hours, but so much fun!  Jessica was there, Keats was demonstrating the new Shoot Tote and the whole Shootsac team was just amazing!  I got a new Hip Slip for my computer and I’m SO excited!

After that I limed back to the hotel room (I forgot how much your feet hurt when you’re on them ALL day long, I was instantly reminded of my days in retail!).  Nathan and I decided to go get some dinner at Diego’s inside the MGM.  Nathan love Mexican and their food was pretty good.  The atmosphere in that place was awesome!

Next we headed down the street to the new Louis Vuitton store to meet up for the [b]school night shoot with Becker, Joe Photo, JVS and Nick Adams.  GREAT information.  I didn’t take a TON of pics but learned a LOT that I can take back into my own business at home.  I also got to meet face to face with a lot of forum friends that I’ve chatted with but never met in person.  Thanks Larry Reeves for showing me some great tips on night shooting with natural available light, Andi Grant for helping me with settings etc, Cathy Crawley for just being so darn cute and Alyson Cohen for showing me tip too!  And thank you Michael Fletcher for becoming a new friend!  I enjoyed talking with you while we were waiting

Here’s the ONE shot I thought I got last night.

Then Nathan and I walked briskly back to our hotel room, because we were F F F FREEZING outside and we crumpled down onto our bed and fell to sleep!  More updates tomorrow about today’s craziness.  Thanks for following along!