Tuesday, July 03, 2007

New Orleans

I went on a two-day business trip to New Orleans on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. We are looking at a prepress workflow/soft proofing system and are getting serious about the systems made by Dalim. Their chief distributer/partner in the U.S. is Blanchard Systems which is based in New Orleans. After doing some research and going through an online demo with Blanchard Systems, we were invited to take a trip to New Orleans to see the software in action on some of our own files and get a better feel for what it can do for us.

So, the company owner Barry, my boss Debbie and I took the trip down there to evaluate the system. I've never been to New Orleans and looked forward to the trip, although I expected we'd really not have time for any sort of sight-seeing. The trip turned out really well and we did get to spend a bit of time checking out the French Quarter and Bourbon Street.

We spent the morning flying in, first to Houston then catching a flight to New Orleans (no direct OKC to New Orleans flights unfortunately). Once we arrived we were picked up by the Blanchard Systems people and delivered to their headquarters where we spent the afternoon watching what the system can do, and asking questions.

That evening they took us out for an excellent dinner at Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse. It is right by Bourbon Street and so they took us on a little tour.

We probably spent about an hour and a half in the area, looking at the sights and checking out a couple of the souvenir shops. We walked to Pat O'Brian's Bar and and sat down in the courtyard to sample their famous Hurricane and enjoy ourselves for a bit. The atmosphere in the courtyard was tremendous, with candle-lit tables, streetlamps, palms and a centerpiece fountain with a huge flame in the middle of it.

We really enjoyed the evening, and overall, the whole trip with the only unpleasant part being a two-hour wait on the plane out of Houston on our way home because of thunderstorms. Debbie and I both brought our cameras and took quite a few pictures while we toured Bourbon Street.

For most of them I didn't use the flash It only goes out about 15 to 20 feet and so it's not really useful for capturing anything that's not immediately in front of the camera. That will actually make photos like I took, worse, because it will illuminate the area in front of the camera, but everything further back (which is what I was usually trying to capture) will be completely dark. Thanks to my camera's image stabalization, most of the photos turned out pretty good despite being shot hand held and using fairly long exposures, since it was dark out. Here are a few of the pictures I shot.


That's the big boss, Barry on the left, walking down Bourbon Street.


Proof we were there! Jean LaFitte's Old Absinthe House at the corner of Bienville and Boubon.


The Blues! A blues bar/club on Bourbon Street.


This fountain sits in the courtyard of Pat O'Brian's. That's a huge flame that burns in the middle of the fountain.


Looking back at downtown New Orleans from Bourbon Street.