Nikon + Vimeo’s Light After Dark party @ SXSW

I was originally going to do one giant SXSW wrap up post but figured a few things warranted their own posts. The first of these posts is about a party/event that I was invited to and hosted by Nikon and Vimeo called Light After Dark.

In quite possibly one of the coolest venues I’ve ever been in, the Light After Dark event was in the Seaholm Power Plant in downtown Austin. With DIPLO and A/V mixologists Eclectic Method supplying the dance beats & projection mapping artists Seeper and CTRL providing visuals & installations, it was easily the party highlight of SXSW for me.

Nikon had a photo pit setup in front of the stage with a number of D7000’s on tripods that VIPs could use to shoot the performers with.

We were given a memory card to use with the cameras and then could keep the card afterwards. I’ve never seen such a cool setup for photographers, in an amazing venue.

Also in the VIP room upstairs, there was a table with all of Nikon’s gear available to play with, including the next camera I’m going to buy, the Nikon P300 point and shoot pocket camera.

Even Ashton Kutcher showed up to shoot Diplo’s performance:

As an avid photographer (who also shoots with Nikon gear), being given VIP access to this kind of event, with the extra touches Nikon did to facilitate photographers was a dream come true…truly an amazing night of music and photography.

It will be hard for any event at future SXSW’s to top this one in my books.

Here’s a little video clip from the show (skip ahead to the 1:01 mark for Eclectic Method):

I’ll post my own video in the coming days once I have a chance to edit it.