There’s a Snake on My Pedal Board (and other weird stuff that happened this week)

Terror in Scott’s Garage!!!
This morning we get back from driving our daughter to school and when I step out of the car in our garage I glance down at my guitar pedal board (I keep a small amp and my pedal board in the garage), and something catches my eye, right above my red Hall of Fame (HOF) Reverb pedal. I think it’s a leaf that blew in so I bend down to pull it out when I realize that it’s not a leaf — it’s a snake. SNAKE!!! (OK, it’s a tiny little baby snake, but I don’t know if I mentioned this, but it’s a SNAKE!!!).

I take a quick pic with my iPhone (shown above); I show Kalebra and she says, “SNAKE!!!” My first thought is to maybe get a broom and coax him/her out of our garage but it’s a SNAKE!!! Kalebra thinks it could be a venomous snake. OK, no way I’m getting near that huge 10-foot venomous lethal SNAKE!!!. Then Kalebra says (upon zooming in on the image on her phone) that she thinks there’s another bigger snake under the pedal board — the mother snake. I’m out. Out, out, out!

I’m calling a Wildlife Removal Service!
It’s called a “wuss tax” — noun. def: the amount of money you pay when you’re too big a wuss to remove a baby snake from your guitar pedal board.

Crisis Averted!
As you can see here, that was clearly a killer snake! Those aren’t my hands by the way — that’s the hands of a highly trained snake wrangler. One that saved my family’s life which was clearly in some kind of major danger from what thankfully turned out to be what the snake wrangler folks called a harmless “Juvenile Black Racer” which to me basically means a “12-foot deadly cobra ready to strike!”  They released the snake outside so it can go terrorize some other poor family. Whew! I’m glad that’s over.

Safely inside my house…a new practice amp
The bigger on, on the left. Just got it (thanks everybody for those Amazon gift cards for my birthday!). It’s the new Boss Katana amp with a 12″ speaker. I’m super digging it (might have to raffle off that Blackstar to raise money for the orphanage). Hey, what’s that orange pedal? A boss distortion pedal. You can never have enough distortion when you play like I do.

A lot of cool stuff going on in this photo
First, up top — that’s my buddy Matt Kloskowski who was my guest on The Grid this week (he was awesome as always — it was six years ago that Matt and I first launched the Grid). More on the Grid in a sec. The Vans shoes I’m holding are a gift from the great folks at Rocky Nook, the publishers of my latest book — it’s called “The Flash Book” (link) which is coming out shortly (we’re wrapping it up next week and off to press it goes), and they took the cover of the book and make a pair of custom Vans shoes with the cover. How cool is that! :)

“Why do so many pro photographers choose Macs over PCs?”
That was the question a photographer asked me this week on Facebook, so we made that the topic of the Grid episode with Matt. The topic was NOT — “Why Macs are better than PCs.” We had to keep reminding people of that and repeating the actual topic because non-Mac users kept wanting “Why Macs are better than PCs.” to BE the topic so they could use the same ol’ tired defenses for a question we weren’t even addressing. We didn’t want to do a show like that — we wanted to answer the question that was posed — Why do so many pro photographers choose Macs over PCs?” and that’s what we did — even though some people watching didn’t like the answer. There is a reason, and we covered it in detail. If you missed it, you can watch it below.

We got a TON of great feedback from that episode, from people who totally “get it” and even some from people who now actually do. :)

See this shot? I took it with my iPhone
I have to say, its “Portrait Mode” (where it puts the background out of focus) is pretty amazing. I learned how to use it from Kalebra. I know, big surprise. LOL! :)  I took this last week when I was shooting a spiral staircase in San Francisco with my buddy Ted. That orange L-bracket (it lets you switch from shooting horizontal to vertical in five seconds) is the QR-11 from 3leggedthing and what’s remarkable about it (besides the color — but it also comes in gray) is that it doesn’t cost $200. It’s $49 (mind-blown!). Here’s the link with details.

This gets my vote for cool t-shirt of the year!
I love this guy! He’s showing off his KelbyOne swag (he came to one of my West Coast seminars last week). If you’re a KelbyOne member, here’s where you can get KelbyOne t-shirt swag and other cool K1 stuff.

There’s some serious Photoshop learnin’ in there!
The new issue of Photoshop User magazine is here, and I have to say, the magazine just keeps getting better and better. I want to take credit for it, but I can’t — it’s the writers and some absolutely kick-butt tutorials, and the new clean layout (Yay Jessica!), the KelbyOne Mags app (free on iOS or Android), and what Chris Main, the Managing Editor has been doing with the magazine. They are crushing it (and I couldn’t be prouder of our team). Check it out in the app or on the member’s site — there’s some serious Photoshop learning in there!

OK, I gotta run!
Here’s wishing you a great Labor Day Weekend, and we’ll see you back here on Tuesday (Monday is a national holiday here in the US, and our offices are closed for the holiday).

Best,

-Scott