Monthly Archives May 2008

My trip to New York this weekend was definitely a “Top Five” experience for me.

First, I spent all day on Sunday in a “Food Shooting” workshop from one of the industry’s top food photographers, and an amazing instructor Lou Manna (author of the book, “Digital Food Photography”). I have a full field report (with photos) to share tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s one of the shots I took in class (click for a larger version).

On Saturday, I spent one of those life-changing days that come along every rare once in a while, as I got to spend the afternoon wandering the streets of New York shooting with a real honest-to-goodness living legend; Jay Maisel. More on this, later this week (along with photos), but it was a humbling, hilarious, educational, insightful, touching, and thought provoking day I’ll never forget.

There were some location shoots snuck in-between, and I’ve got some wild stories, and yet another of my now famous “Scott’s Photography School of Hard Knocks” moments that I’ll share later this week, as well.

Also, I had dinner tonight with Matt and RC at my favorite restaurant in the whole wide world; Carmine’s on West 44th (though RC took me to a Spanish restaurant in Spanish Harlem last night that is already inching it’s way into my top five list).

So, why aren’t I going into detail now? Because it’s nearly 1:00 am; I’ve got a shoot in five hours, then my workshop at B&H Photo at 10:00 am, and I’m a cross between glowing and absolutely whipped. I’ve got a lot of cool things to share, and that’s what I’ll be doing on my flight back home tomorrow night.

Hope I see you at B&H Photo in New York tomorrow. Have a “top-five” Monday. :)

Corey Barker turned me onto this amazing flash video (it’s only about 90 seconds long), at the MGM Grand web site and I have to tell you; it is absolutely just about the most amazing Flash-based promo I’ve ever seen. This should have been a SuperBowl ad (it blows most of the others away).

Take 90 seconds, follow this link, then click the ENTER MAXIMUM VEGAS link on the right side of the photo; sit back, and just watch. Incredibly creative, seamlessly edited, and flawlessly executed. My hats off the designers/video editors who dreamed this up.

Since I released my “7-point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3” book, I’ve had a lot of questions from Lightroom users about how to open an image processed in Lightroom as Smart Object in Photoshop. Unfortunately, that feature wasn’t available in Lightroom 1.4, so while there was a clunky workaround (which I covered earlier this year on the blog), it wasn’t the real integration we wanted.

Luckily, one of the features Adobe added in the public beta of Lightroom 2.0 made part of my Seven Point System for Photoshop CS3 work that much better with Lightroom because of its direct support of Smart Objects.

Just go under Lightroom 2.0’s Photo menu, under Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS3, and choose Open as Smart Object in Photoshop. Once the image is opened as a Smart Object, to reedit the image just double-click on it and it opens in Camera Raw (which is similar to opening it in the Develop Module of Lightroom). You can make your changes there, click the Done button, and it updates the Smart Object automatically. When you’re done editing the Photoshop file, and you save and close it, the image then returns to Lightroom for output.

Anyway, I know a lot of people have been hoping for this support in Lightroom 2.0 (it was on my Lightroom 2.0 wishlist), and I’m happy to see it made it’s way there. :)

I gotta tell ya; I was pretty excited to see this press release in my email in box yesterday, as Peachpit Press announced that according to figures obtained from Nielsen Bookscan, my book, The Digital Photography Book, Vol. 1 is the best-selling book on digital photography ever (selling over a quarter-million copies thus far).

You can read the full release here, but something that’s not in the release (which I learned in a phone call from my publisher), is that Volume 2 of that book is selling between three and four times as many copies as Volume 1 did for the same period of time. I’m speechless.

My humble thanks to all my readers for their trust, support, and for making darn sure there will be a Volume 3. :)

Here’s waz up:

• One of my readers (I believe his name is Earl) posted a really useful comment here on Tuesday; he mentioned that on every removable drive he has (like a flash drive for example), he always puts a folder named “Property Of” and it contains his contact info. It’s how he got back a flash drive lost in a snowy parking lot. Anyway, I thought it was a great tip and I wanted to (a) pass it on, and (b) thank Earl for sharing it (I’m sending him a signed copy of my 7-point-system book).
• If you’re looking for a really unique photo workshop, with a famous photographer/trainer, check out the “Focus on Nature” workshops in Iceland. We’re talking big name trainers like Stephen Johnson, National Geographic photographer Chris Rainer, Rick Sammon, Vincent Versace, and John Paul Caponigro, among others.
• I saw Mark Johnson’s (from TheRadientVista.com) brand new book, Botanical Dreaming; Using Photoshop, your camera, and your heart to create inspiring images, and it’s just a beautiful book from top to bottom. His images of flowers are just stunning, and Katrin Eismann says of the book, “…Botanical Dreaming guides the reader on a journey of creative thinking, photographic insights, and valuable Photoshop tutorials with a well-written text and a variety of beautiful images.” Here’s the link to the book on Mark’s site.
• Photoshop World instructor Taz Tally just had a new class go live at KelbyTraining.com called “Creative Suite Integration.” If you’ve been waiting for a class on how to get the most out of working between the different Creative Suite apps; this is the one! Here’s a link to the list of lessons (and you can watch a free sample there, too).
• Here’s a schedule of Matt and my free classes on Monday, May 5th at B&H Photo’s Event Space in New York City (courtesy of NAPP and B&H Photo).

1. 10:00 am – 12:00 pm: Scott Kelby’s Photoshop CS3 Seven-Point System (sold out)
2. 12:30 – 2:30 pm: Introduction to Lightroom (with Matt Kloskowski) (sold out)
3. 3:00 – 5:00 pm: Scott Kelby’s Photoshop CS3 Seven-Point System (sold out)
4. Matt’s also teaching his session: Tuesday from 12:30 – 2:30 pm.
5. Corey Barker is teaching his Photoshop Channels Class on Tuesday from 10:00 – 12:00 pm, and then again on Wednesday from 12:30 – 2:30 pm.
6. RC Concepcion is teaching a class on Wednesday morning from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm on Creating an Online Photo Gallery for photographers.

For more info, or to register for these FREE classes (space is VERY limited), click here.

That’s it for today. See ya tomorrow! :)