Really enjoyed Focus on Imaging. Presenting was nerve-wracking, of course, and I really felt out of practice, but the most fun was being on the stand answering all sorts of questions, most common being what's new in CS4, should I upgrade to CS4 or get Lightroom, how's Lightroom different from Photoshop, why won't CS3 read my 5DMkII files, and should I switch to Mac for Lightroom (answer: yes if you want to, but don't feel you need to do so - look at the Dell XPS Studio 64 bit Vista with 12Gb of RAM). Hardly any time to look around, and less time to do shopping for myself, but I did get a chance to examine some Blurb photo books and was very impressed with the image quality, both colour and black and white.

It was particularly good to put faces to names I've known online - such as Chris Bishop, Richard Earney of Inside Lightroom, and Sean McCormack. Poor Sean, I was only giving the fella a lift back to his hotel, and we must have discovered every roundabout and closed car park south of Birmingham before - half an hour later - he reached for his iPhone and its GPS. Later that evening (we went for a pint, a bite, and a natter in the loudest darts pub in the Midlands) it didn't take him so long - the first wrong exit from a roundabout and out came that iPhone. But at least he told me one thing he'd discovered - I'm actually friendlier in person than he'd ever expected. Now that's a compliment - and a justifiably backhanded one too. Phew!