Greetings from New York City!!!!

Got in yesterday afternoon for my seminar today, and spent the day with my buddy RC Concepcion goofing around in Manhattan (RC used to live here, and he knows all the great restaurants, the history, where everything is and such). We went to the Intrepid museum (built on a World War II aircraft carrier), which was just fantastic (I had been there about 15 or so years ago, and it’s just gotten that much better over the years! Even saw the Space Shuttle Enterprise).

The video clip above is about the seminar I’m teaching today, but if you’re not here in New York today at my seminar, you can catch either me or RC as we take the “show on the road.” The next stop is RC’s in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 15th, and then I’m out in Sacramento, California on August 22nd, and then in Denver on August 29th. Here’s the link for details and/or to sign up. Hope to meet you in person!

Here’s some other quick Monday stuff:

(1) If you’re into seeing the Olympics from a photographer’s point-of-view, our good friend Bill Pekala from Nikon Professional Services is out at the Olympics in London, and has been posting a great series of images on his blog from a different point of view. If you’ve got a minute, it’s worth checking out (here’s the link) and he posts new stuff about every day.

(2) My buddy RC bought a Nexus 7 tablet and I am just really impressed with it. For $199, it is really amazing. WAY better than I ever thought a $199 tablet would be. Love the small size and the way it feels in your hands. Very quick and responsive with a nice crisp screen, and pretty lightweight. I have to say, if a new smaller 7″ iPad wasn’t just six weeks or so away (rumor), I’d probably get one.

(3) If you’re into HDR, you’ve gotta check out Nik Software’s newly updated HDR Efex Pro 2. This is the tool a lot of pros are using and they’re raving about the new version (I just started taking it through it’s paces, and it already looks really cool). You can download a fully-working demo from their site (here’s the link).

(4) MPIX (just the coolest online photo lab ever) is having a “Hip My House” contest where you can win $5,000 worth of prints (RC talked about this on his Guest Blog post a couple of weeks ago), and if you haven’t entered….why not? This contest is really clever, and you’ll love the results. Here’s the link with all the details.

(5) I mentioned that I’d let you guys know how I’m liking my new Macbook Pro. Well I am absolutely super-digging it (as my wife would say). This thing is just screaming fast (I had no idea how big a difference the SSD drives would make) and while the display looks great, neither Photoshop or Lightroom has been updated to take advantage of the Retina display yet, but outside of that, the rest looks wildly crisp (in a good way).

Lastly, if you’re here in New York at my seminar, make sure you come up and say hi. I always get a kick out of meeting folks who read my blog, so track me down so I can thank you. Here’s wishing you a Monday that feels like a Friday! Cheers.