The “Best of 2014” Here on the Blog (Part 2)

Milestones for 2014
Besides the most popular and most commented-upon posts (which I posted here in Part 1 on Monday), we were pretty busy here on the blog during 2014. Here’s some highlights of what we shared:

We raised nearly $40,000 for the Springs of Hope Orphanage
I don’t think anything we did this year was as important as this  by having folks who participated in my 7th Annual Worldwide Photo Walk donate $1 when they signed up, we made a major difference in the lives of some really wonderful kids. Of everything we did this year, this is what I’m most proud of.

I started my love affair with Exposure.co
Last year when I posted my “Favorite Football Shots from the 2013 Season” I tried Exposure.co for the first time, and literally fell in love it, and it became my go-to source for photo-storytelling.  I used Exposure.co for a number of photo stories from the year, including:

A Walk in Rome (images from four days in Rome) – link
Shooting The U.S. Open – link
A Colorful Journey (images from my trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico) – link
Shooting The U.S. Open Men’s Final – link
Game Day with The Vols (shooting Tennessee football) – link
A Rolling Museum (my images of the classic American cars of Cuba) – link
Automotive Photography – link
Shooting the Firestone Grand Prix Indy Race – link
The World on a White Seamless Background – link
From Prague to Budapest (images from my trip along the Danube river)  – link
A little bit of London (shots from my quick trip across the pond) – link 

I tried some “silent movie style” 30-second Micro Photoshop Tips
I tried something new  super quick tips I could do, at my kitchen table at home, without hooking up a mic and I would do them like a silent movie, with just text to explain the tip. The tips were cool, but ultimately the experiment failed, with many folks leaving me comments that “the audio wasn’t working.” You can check out some I posted here on the blog right here. 

We Took The Photoshop World Conference & Expo to Atlanta for the First Time
It’s pretty much been in Orlando for the past 15 years, but this year we thought we’d try something new by taking the show to Atlanta. The Cobb Galleria venue in Atlanta was absolutely ideal for a conference, and it was one of our best conferences ever! (but of course, everybody still wants to go to Vegas).

I taught at the WPPI Conference for the first time
What a great show, and a great experience. I spoke on the Conference Track teaching retouching and I got to speak in Canon’s booth to just huge crowds. Totally had a great time from start to finish and met tons of great people.

Adobe Launched Lightroom Mobile⦠
â¦and we were there with not only an in-depth Launch center, but we launched our first online class on Lightroom mobile to get everybody up and running fast. Here’s the link to the class.

Karen Hutton made me cry
I’ve never actually seen the finished interview, because it was so upsetting (and embarrassing) at the time, I couldn’t bring myself to watch it (if I had, I’m sure I would have made them cut out that part.

Apple pulled the plug on Aperture, and we had a Webinar on “How to move from Aperture to Lightroom” that very night
We can be really quick when we need to be. And of course besides that, we put together a full-length KelbyOne.com online class on exactly how to make the big switch.

We produced a free live Travel Photography Webcast called “From Prague to Budapest”
After my trip, I shared some photos, some tips, some tricks, some post processing techniques, I answered questions — it was so much fun. You can watch the entire Webinar above.

I told probably my most embarrassing photography story ever (above). It is NOT pretty.

We broke some news about a little secret Adobe kinda snuck into the release of Lightroom 5.5 to allay a lot of folks’ concerns about the Creative Cloud photographers’ bundle. After you watch the video above, read the Q&A I put together to help explain it. Here’s the link (but again, watch the video first so the Q&A will make sense).

We got more love from this than you can imagine
It’s called “How Photographers Can Turn Their DSLR Video Clips Into Movies in Just 5 Minutes (using, believe it or not, just Photoshop). The clip is above. Yes, this is for you.

I Shared a Little Known Feature of Lightroom Mobile here
I shared a quick video tutorial (above) about a little-known feature of Lightroom Mobile that is just so darn cool. I do a live model shoot in the video above (which is much better than a dead model shoot) to show you how it all works. You’ll dig it.

I gave Project Luca a shot
This was fairly recently — it’s a new iPad-based photo storytelling app, and I tried it out by doing a story on my very short photographic journey in London a few months ago. I wouldn’t say I trashed it, but it needs a few things before it’s ready for prime time (it’s still in beta, but the developers saw the article, responded the same day, and are fixing a bunch of stuff before it ships, so it’ll wind up being pretty darn cool). Here’s the link

Book Launches:

I launched Part 5 of my “The Digital Photography Book” Series here on the blog— this one is all “Photo Recipes.”

I released a big update to my book, “The Photoshop CC Book for Digital Photographers” – it’s my first all “CC” version and it’s gone over really, really well. Still very excited about it (the video above explains it).

I released an ebook of nothing but my Chapter Intros (to raise money for the Springs of Hope Orphanage) -The book is available right here.

We did some stuff that mattered
Like Behind the Lens: An evening with Joe McNally — it was just an electrifying presentation, a magical night, and one of our most popular and most talked-about classes of the entire year. Every photography student should be required to see it. (link)

We also did our first documentary: Moose Peterson’s “Aviation Photography: Warbirds and the Men Who Flew Them.” It came out so wonderfully, we shared it with the world with a one-night free premiere, with Moose himself on hand. There’s wasn’t a dry eye in the house. This was something we were all really proud of.

We launched a new series of in-depth interviews called “Trailer Blazers: Powerful Women of Photography” showcasing women who changed and challenged our industry.

We also did our first-ever “Creative Cloud Month” where each day we released a new full-length online class on one of Adobe’s Creative Cloud applications. (Interesting note: When we launched this, Adobe had around 1.5 million subscribers to the Adobe Creative Cloud. Today they have only 3.5 million).

Jeremy Cowart in Miami portraits on location revisited
A few years after our classes in Venice Beach, California with Jeremy (which were such a hit), we caught up with Jeremy again on Miami’s South Beach and, son-of-a-gun, man can that guy turn nothin’ into something. It’s like a masterclass on how to shoot anywhere, and it was as big a hit as his classes from Venice. You can watch the intro right here and you’ll see what I mean (even if you’re not a KelbyOne member).

SmugMug Films mini-documentery on me (above) as an educator and photographer was such an honor (and they produced it beautifully).

WHEW!!!!
That’s just some of the highlights of what we covered in 2014 here on the blog and at KelbyOne. Next week we’ll wrap up with Part 3, which will be our top-10 episodes of “The Grid” (our weekly photography talkshow) and I’ll embed the episodes right on the blog so you can watch ’em right there.

Have a great weekend everybody and we’ll see you next week!

Best,

-Scott

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