Congratulations to Otherwise on their new deal with Century Media Records! These guys rock, and they work their tails off. I had the pleasure of shooting the concert last night at Ovation inside Green Valley Ranch, and the band was surprised to receive a visit from the label President, Don Robertson and a gift from the VP of Entertainment for Station Casinos, Judy Alberti.

Here’s a link to the announcement from Century Media Records.

Go pick up some Otherwise music from iTunes (my personal reco’s are Soldiers and I Don’t Apologize) and look for their videos on YouTube. If you like hard rock and heavy metal, you’ll thank me for it.

42 Concerts ranging from Aaron Lewis to ZZ Top. Everything from Boney James Jazz to P-Funk. Get this: 9,894 photos taken in 2011.

Know I how I knew all this? I just catalogued it and backed it all up to an external hard drive. In 46 minutes. Gotta love Adobe Lightroom, folks.

I’m such a freakin’ freak for Lightroom. I have taught a few classes to the Vegas Adobe User Group in the past few years, and I’m doing it again in the next couple months. If you shoot photos, don’t wait. Invest in a copy and learn it. It won’t take much money or time.

Here’s a couple shots from 2011 that I had on hand. Hope you like ‘em.

Check out a few of the photos I shot this weekend for Station Casinos.

Blue Oyster Cult – Nov. 18, 2011 at Boulder Station’s Railhead.

What a summer! I haven’t blogged in a while, and those of you who know me know why. Here’s some highlights of my summer 2011:

• Best Man in my brother’s wedding
• Tried to keep up with yard work while watching toddler on evenings & weekends
• Develop Social Media campaign for summer-long concert series
• Work with internal and external team to implement strategic sharing of said concert series
• Turned 35
• Photograph each concert in series (with a couple exceptions), meet & greets & after parties
• Met B.B. King
• Taught my 18 month old son touchdown dances
• Reached 1,000 followers on twitter (Seriously – I don’t get it. I’m not that interesting, am I?)
• Met Motley Crue
• Neglected my lawn to the point that we have now hired a lawn service (worth it!)
• Continue to monitor and manage dozen or so social media streams for work
• Met Weezer
• Develop Social Media campaign for biggest football contest in Vegas
• Hosted mega fantasy football draft (I’m currently dead last. Thanks Mike Vick!)
• Met Eddie Trunk from That Metal Show and bought him a beer
• Attended classes at the first Digital World Expo, organized by my local friends in LVIMA

Saturday, June 18th was one of those nights where, although I worked by feet sore, I wore the same grin of me as an obnoxious 12 year old. I bought Theatre Of Pain and cranked Smokin’ In The Boys Room about 50 times in a row at night just to irk my parents, I guess. Below you’ll see me, 23 yrs later, 2nd from the left, in between Vince and Nikki from Motley Crue. Later, they signed my Dr. Feelgood LP. Nikki was rocking a sweet Leica camera. I gotta get one of those! I chatted briefly about LPs with Vince and with Nikki about his Heroin Diaries book. Go read that, if you haven’t. I read it in about 36 hours, and it stuck in my thoughts for weeks. He’s one of the most creative minds in entertainment, I think.

Poison went on immediately after the meet and greet session, so I had to haul ass to the photo area – conveniently located 100 ft from the stage. (Sarcasm). Using my Canon 70-200mm prime, I was able to get “in there” somewhat well. Hell, some of the photographers didn’t even sport a DSLR. Wonder how their stuff turned out. Sucks, because every 3rd person in the 100 ft ahead of us had a droid or an iPhone getting the same shots. Whatever. Rules are rules.

CC and Bobby Dall from Poison. Genuinely nice fellas who sounded great on stage.

Motley crashed the party at 9:30, and caught many off guard. No ringmaster-hype, no encores at the end. Just there to kick your ass, which is what they did. They rocked a mix of old and new stuff before settling into the classics for a 90-minute set.

How creepy does Mick Mars look right here? My favorite shot of the night, I think.

This session from Tommy Lee blew 9,000 minds. What else can I say?

Friday June 17th. I think this was the first Reggae show I have had the opportunity to shoot, and what a way to start:  legendary, classic, icons, however you want to describe Steel Pulse, they live up to it. Absolutely awesome live set. Not a frown in the place.

How you feelin’?

Lead guitar, Donovan McKitty. The dude can shred. I bumped into him at the Grand Cafe after the show. What an awesome guy – he picked up our dinner check for us! We chatted about Hawaii, where they just returned from doing 4 shows. I hope he got the photos I sent over on Sunday.

I shot the Goo Goo Dolls on June 3, 2011. Fun show for about 4000 great fans.

Here’s my favorite shots. Let me know what you think of them.

Stay tuned for one hell of a great music summer. On tap: Ted Nugent, ZZ Top, Weezer, BB King, OAR, and many more…

See you at the show!

Nate

I’m honored to be asked by the good folks at the Las Vegas chapter of the AIGA (Professional Organization for Design) to be a panelist for an upcoming Social Media Panel Discussion.

• Check out the LV AIGA’s Group Page on Facebook here.
• Check out the LV AIGA’s website here.

Here’s the info from the RSVP Page. (<– Do it!)

Social Media Smucktard Cindy Waters discusses social ROI and how to navigate through the sh*t storm.  Plus an allstar panel to discuss the future of all things PR & Web technology featuring

Paul Chamberlain – VP Interactive of BRAINtrust
Nate Ludens – Interactive Marketing at Stations Casinos
Jackie Zlatanovski - VP Marketing at Circus Circus Hotel Casino
Cindy Waters – Media Strategies at The OutCast Agency
moderated by Kendall Hardin

The panel we will be address:

• Why do you use social media? Does it cause your target audience to buy stuff from you or use your services?
  
• What is your business model for social media? Branding, e-commerce, research, customer retention, lead generation?
  
• How do you calculate or measure ROI? What success metric do you use?
  
• Is there an ROI Cycle?
  
• What resources do you (or your client) devote to social media?
  
• How has social media helped/hindered your company’s growth?
  
• What trends do you see developing in audience buying habits?
  
• Pros and Cons for Social Media
  
• Mobile Computing? Should You Embrace It?
  
• What defines a SUCCESSFUL social media campaign?

This looks like fun. I hope you can join us on Saturday, June 4th at the Pinball Hall Of Fame, from 3-7pm. More details below.