Note: This post arrives nearly a dozen years after the events contained due to gaps happening at various times during my blogging life. In an effort to repair my omissions, I turn to my archive of photos and try to add some written relevance to the images. It is late May 2023, as I get to this.

Arrived in Las Vegas just this morning to attend my first National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, and first up was the opportunity to meet Mary Poplin of Imagineer Systems. This is the company that makes the amazing tracking software called Mocha. Mary is the public face of Mocha as she’s a demo/tutorial whiz that could have anyone falling in love with this rather complex software that sits within Adobe After Effects for me. Mary’s film credits include work on The Kite Runner, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and more.

I had to take in the talk from Shane Hurlbut, the cinematographer, as for the past couple of years, I’ve seen more than a few things from him advocating for using Canon DSLRs for filmmaking. When I was a kid, the three things I wanted to do as an adult were writing, filmmaking, and photography. Working in a factory, being a soldier in the U.S. Army, and designing record cover art for techno music in Germany was never really in my dreams, though each offered me something important. Up until the time Caroline and I left for our Grand Canyon rafting adventure, I was deep in developing the skills to make short films using my DSLR, and while I’d been derailed for a year and a half as I worked relentlessly on my book, this reconnection to one of my other passions was a breath of fresh air. Though Shane has many film credits to his name, being shouted at by Christian Bale during a meltdown on the set of Terminator Salvation might be his most notable moment for the general public.

The faces I’m sharing from the two days in Vegas have become quite familiar to me as they are sources of learning for me. This is Tom Guilmette, whose day job is director of photography, but on the side, he’s made a ton of demos and tutorials inspiring thousands of aspiring filmmakers.

Over the course of the day, I checked out gear I’d never be able to afford, looked into software the pros use, and drooled over all the wonderful tools on display. As for what I did after the show, I have no idea as there were no notes kept for this quick two-day trip to Sin City.