I am actually really excited to write this particular blog post. My trip to Vegas was at the beginning of February. It was a very quick trip to cover the annual Auto Summit for JD Power. This was my 5th event to shoot for JD Power. I love these people so much. The first gig I ever shot for them was back in the fall of 2024, and I was driving downtown and was running a little late (a little late for my normal 30 minutes before the gig cushion) and I was STRESSED. I was greeted by the events person who offered me food and drink and let me know that this would be an easy day. I told her, “As long as the Diet Coke and coffee keeps flowing, I will be good.” About 3 hours in, the events person hand delivered me a Diet Coke while I was shooting. Ugh! I love them.

So, to Vegas I flew from Nashville, with ice and snow still on our runway to the 70’s and 80’s of the desert. The last time I had been in Vegas was as a freshman in HS. The biggest difference: that Sphere. It is like all I can look at for the first 5 hours. I can see it from the runway, I can see it from my Uber, I can see it from my hotel! Ads for the Wizard of Oz, The Backstreet Boys, and just the most random stuff appear on it.

I decide to do a couple Vegas type things… I opted out of the gambling and just went straight to the tattoo parlor. My aunt got married at the Treasure Island Casino and Hotel. That hotel had a tattoo shop, I texted her and asked her to write out a phrase that I love from a show we BOTH love. She wrote out the phrase on a piece of paper at her home in the UK and within an hour I had it on my arm. My tattoo artist was Raven, and she was magical. We chatted about photography and life, and I wished I had chosen a bigger piece so that we could chat longer. I didn’t need anything else from my Vegas trip at that point, it was perfect. But, I would not be me if I didn’t also take my camera our for a street photo walk, so that was the next thing.

After my photo walk, I met up with my beloved JD Power people that evening and we chatted for hours about work and life in a sports bar the the Wynn, with cigarette smoke swirling around us. We called it a night because of our early morning, and I went to my corner room at the Wynn. The tattoo experience was amazing and perfect, but this room was just everything and it was truly hard to leave it. The bathroom was HUGE, I had a corner room so I got two huge windows. I could close the windows from the ipad next to my bed and they closed in a very dramatic and slow way. I have maybe never felt so fancy in my life.

The day starts early with coverage of the auto summit. There are around 500 people in attendance. The schedule is non-stop, which I love. I shoot the speaker on stage, some crowd, and then I deliver some select images to their socials person. Rinse and repeat until the whole conference is complete. Just getting to be around these people makes the day go by fast and, in a way, I don’t want it to. I know that I have to get in an uber at 4am the next morning to get on a plane to get back to Nashville to shoot the opening night of AU Basketball at 4:30pm. I will have 45 minutes at home to get my sporty spice outfit on (a term that my dear friend coined the other day when she saw me in my “athletic clothes) and head to Municiple. Whirlwind indeed.

I say my goodbyes to my JD Power people back at that sports bar that evening. Did I mention I love them? I love them. I woke at 3:30am to get downstairs for my Uber, she was a DELIGHTFUL Asian woman, probably in her 70’s. She told me that I was very lucky to have the job that I have, and that she wishes she had gone to school so that she didn’t have to be driving an Uber in Vegas at 4am. We complained about how expensive a bag of frozen chicken is now, and she was the perfect exclamation point to my trip. Til next time you funny big little city in the middle of the desert.