Photoshop World Recap (in Two minutes or Less)
Wow!!!! What a show!!!! Hands down—one of our best ever!!!!
As I write this I’m sitting in the Airport, waiting for my flight to Minneapolis (where I’ll be spending the day with a sold-out crowd of nearly 600 photographers tomorrow for my Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It Tour), and although I want to share so many things with you about the show, I just have a few minutes now, so here are some quick photos and thoughts from one of our best Photoshop Worlds yet!
Stole the show
Sports photography legend and the man who brought light-painting to the masses, Dave Black. What an incredible presenter. Everybody was talking about him, and at the conference wrap up, he delivered an inspirational talk that earned him a standing ovation. You had to be there.
Getting Buzz outside our industry
Adobe sneak-peaking some very cool new iPad apps that are in development. A lot of jaws were dropping.
Owned the Expo Floor
Westcott did it again, with their shootout booths. So incredibly creative (I loved the Samurai Warrior guy), and very well thought out and executed—-a huge hit with the attendees (and another reason to bring your camera to Photoshop World). Plus, they had their new brighter, badder, Spiderlite TD6s on display, and that alone created a lot of buzz, and they were doing live shoots in their own tradeshow booth as well. It was Westcott everywhere you looked.
Behaved himself this year
Vanelli. I never wanted to kill him, even for a moment. ;-)
Has gotten so popular, it’s become its own “thing.”
The poolside after-hours tweet-up. It was the best one yet!
People were stopping me in the halls to thank me for….
The Photoshop World App. I passed the credit on to Shawn Welch.
People were giddy about…
Moose Peterson’s & Joe McNally’s Photo Safari. They were over the top about it!
Pulling huge crowds on the show floor…
Wacom with their in-booth theater. They did it right, and it rocked!
Everybody wanted to know how…..
Terry White and David Ziser were shooting wirelessly to their iPads (both using different methods).
Caught everybody that hadn’t seen him before by surprise:
Jim Schmelzer. Even the class moderator in his room had to text me during the conference to tell me how much Jim was rocking his class!!!
Ended the show on a high note….
Moose Peterson’s amazing photo presentation at the end of the last day. It was really hard following the incredible presentation that Dave Black had just finished, but if there’s anybody you want up next, it was Moose.
Finding a new audience here in America that absolutely loves him!
Frank Doorhof. People dug him so much they were stopping me to ask me if I had see him present. I had. Many times. That’s why I flew him all the way over from The Netherlands. :)
They were everywhere!
iPads. I don’t think there was a photographer at Photoshop World without one.
Was never seen, even for a moment, without his iPad in hand:
RC. It completes him. ;-)
Put way too much on his plate:
Me. I hardly got to see the expo floor, visit with friends, or buy any stuff (I’m a sucker for trade shows). I’m going to vastly change my meeting/demo/class schedule for Vegas in the fall, so I can actually see more of Photoshop World. I didn’t get to see a single class, and that stinks. Sigh. :(
People kept saying “You need to give this guy more classes!”
Jeremy Cowart. I asked him to kick off the closing ceremonies as the first presenter, and he won a LOT of new fans. Follow him on twitter (@jeremycowart). It’s worth it.
A bigger hit than I expected:
Our “Photoshop Fashion” theme, and opening keynote.
What I’m not doing again in a Vegas
A balloon drop. Those who were there know exactly why. ;-)
Best Booth Theme tie-in to our overall theme
Adobe’s booth, with fashion designs in their booth, really carried on the theme brilliantly.
Coolest idea for a contest
Alumni got to complete for the best fashion show runway shot, and the winner got a new iPad 2. Of course, they had to wrestle RC for it.
Best News for NAPP
This year’s attendance was even bigger than last years. :)
Came on this year as one of our official show photographers
“Big Daddy” Don Page. He was everywhere shootin’ every thing!
My heroes of the show
Our video production team, led by Erik Kuna. These guys and gals did some amazing stuff—they shot everything, and put together some really great videos for the closing ceremonies (instead of getting any sleep). They worked their butt off, and I’m really proud of them! Way to go Juan, Jen, Meredith, Daniel, Brandon, and Adam!
Woman who makes it all look so easy (but it’s not)
Our Conference director Julie Stephenson. We all work on little pieces of the conference and expo, but she works on, and directs it all. She got a standing ovation when introduced to the crowd. She deserves it! :)
I was really surprised that…
My “Photoshop for Travel Photographers” class was so well attended. It was standing-room only in a huge room with three giant screens across. I was concerned that hardly anybody would show up. I was wrong.
This came out better than I thought…
We broadcast a live episode of the Grid from right on the Trade Show floor, with my guests David Ziser, and Rick Sammon (Matt was teaching a class at the only time slot we could tape it), and it went WAY better than I thought. I was afraid with the noise of crowds on the show floor, it would be weird, but David and Rick were so good, it didn’t matter. Our staff projected live Twitter questions on a wall of the convention center so we could see them from where we were broadcasting from. The whole thing worked WAY better than expected.
Incredibly cool thing that Peachpit Press did
The first part was—they surprised me before the start of my last class of the conference by having my book Editor, and marketing team from Peachpit present me with an award for being the #1 Photography Book Author for 2010. They also gave me an iPad 2, but better yet, they created a new scholarship in my name, and the recipient of the scholarship gets the full $5,000 tuition paid to spend a life-changing week at Jay Maisel’s hands-on workshop in New York City. That was a very classy, very cool, “very Peachpit” thing to do, and I was blown away at their generosity and commitment to learning. Now….I just have to find the next up-and-coming photographer to make use of that award. :)
Classes that I heard totally rocked it:
I heard numerous mentions for Corey Barker’s special effects class, Jeremy Cowart’s Expo Floor sessions, Matt Kloskowski’s Live Compositing class, Jim Schmelzer’s pre-conference workshop, Alan Hess’s class on Exposure and Composition, Katrin Eismann’s “From One to Many,” Terry White’s Facebook for photographers, Joe & Moose’s Photo Safari workshop, and Dave Black’s “A Guide to Sports Action photography.”
Lightroom was getting some big love!
The Lightroom sessions did really well, and we had tons of them. Lots of interest in Lightroom throughout the entire conference.
Lighting was….well….everywhere!
I did a presentation at the Manfrotto Distribution booth called “Behind the Scenes Lighting with Elinchrom and Lastolite Gear” and it was part slide presentation, and part live demo, and I had lots of great folks there. I showed all kinds of behind-the-scenes photos and examples to show how I use their gear in my studio.
We had a great live studio audience…
For our taping of Photoshop User TV on the Expo Floor. Lots of great, very patient, and very loud people who were there to see us tape the episode. We gave out TONS of goodies to the studio audience, and a few things to the folks watching back home, too.
Lots of Adobe folks at the show
Besides having a big presence on the trade show floor, Adobe was there in full force with Photoshop team members attending the show as well, including Senior Photoshop Product Manager Bryan O’Neal Hughes. I think it’s so cool that our participants get to meet face-to-face, one-on-one with the crew from Adobe.
Bert Monroy’s “Times Square” full panorama was there on display
This giant, backlit, bright, and thoroughly amazing piece drew lots of interest on the tradeshow floor from photographers and illustrators alike.
One last thing..
If you did your own coverage of the show, including posting photos from the event, or blogging about it, and posting videos on YouTube.com, let me know and I’ll post some links tomorrow or Friday. Thanks again to everyone who participated in Photoshop World, from the instructors to the attendees, to the staff. Together you all make it a very special event, and it’s a true honor to be a part of it.
See you in Las Vegas in September! :)