Introducing the Westcott “Terry White” Travel Portrait Lighting Kit

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You might remember that I recently reviewed the NEW Westcott Rapid Box 26″ Octa softbox. In that review I actually put together the items that I would travel with to do a portrait shoot. Well it seems that Westcott and B&H liked it so much that they honored me by naming it after me. Introducing the Westcott Terry White Travel Portrait Lighting Kit! How cool is that? I remember when B&H did this for Scott Kelby back when he was touring with his Light It, Shoot it, Retouch it Kit. I know what some of you are thinking so let me address your question now. Nope I’m not getting a single dime from Westcott. Nada! Zip! Zilch! I recommend products here because I use them, not because I get paid to promote them (with the exception of Adobe of course since that is my employer/day job). The point of this kit is that I now have a single URL to refer people to when they want to know/buy my setup rather than having to send them 4-5 different links. From what I heard, some of my readers even printed out my review and took it the WPPI show and shopped with it at the show.

The only thing that the kit doesn’t include is the speedlight. The reason for that is that B&H would have to create several separate SKUs for each manufacturers speedlight and it’s just easier to tell people to use whichever speedlight they want or in most cases already have.

The Kit Includes:

1 Westcott Rapid Octa 26″ Box

1 Westcott X-Drop kit “white” background

1 lightstand to hold the Rapid Oct and your speedlight

2 Pocket Wizard PlusX Transceivers

 

I’m also happy to announce that B&H has marked it down as an introductory offer taking $25.95 off the price. You can check the kit out here.

It’s quite an honor as a photographer to recognized by both Westcott and B&H and I thank everyone for your support and being a fan of my work. See more of my gear here.


Updating My Photography Website Just Got A Lot Easier

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I’ve talked about and raved about the Lightroom Plug-ins from The Turning Gate here before. I use their Lightroom Plug-ins to build and maintain my photography website. I also use their awesome Client Response Gallery to provide my clients proofs via the web. I’ve been in contact with the developer on many occasions and I often beta test and give feedback on what he’s planning next. There was one plug-in though that caught me completely off guard. It isn’t often that something comes along that revolutionizes my entire workflow! The new TTG CE3 Publisher has done just that!

The old process of updating my galleries

I maintain my web galleries in Lightroom as Collections. So I have a Fashion Collection, Travel Collection, Beauty Collection, Fitness Collection, Recent Work Collection, etc. When it comes time to update one of those Collections, the process in Lightroom is very easy. Just drag in new images and delete old images. It takes all of a few seconds to do it. After updating the Collection then the time would come to update my website. This would involve a trip to the Web module and selecting one of my Gallery presets. This would choose the appropriate TTG gallery and restore all my settings for color, styles, text descriptions, etc. Great so far! Now I would either hit the Upload button in Lightroom or the Export button so that I could upload via my own FTP client. While this procedure wasn’t hard, it was time consuming. Each time you update a web gallery in Lightroom, Lightroom has to upload the entire gallery and all of the images from scratch. It has no way of just adding the new images and deleting the old ones.

Continue reading “Updating My Photography Website Just Got A Lot Easier”

Adobe Creative Cloud – How To Share Files with Clients/Colleagues for Review

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In this episode of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast, Terry White shows how to share Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign Files with clients and colleagues and all they’ll need is a browser to comment and see your Photoshop Layers.

Are you missing out on my Bonus Content?

See more of my Adobe Creative Suite Videos on my Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:

Learn Adobe Creative Suite with Terry White - Wizzard Media



Nike FuelBand vs Jawbone Up

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After reading my buddy Jason’s review of the Jawbone Up over at BestAppSite.com I decided to order one. Like so many of my fellow Americans I’m simply not active enough. I know it. No need to tell me. The idea behind the Up is that you wear it all day (and night) and it monitors your activity/steps. You can sync it with your smartphone and get reports anytime you want. You can see how many steps you’ve taken on a given day as well as how many hours you’ve slept and if you’re diligent about entering the food you eat, it can monitor that too. If you have friends that use the Up you can become buddies and see each other’s progress. This is where my competitive side kicks in as I want to have as many or more steps than my friends on a given day. Having used the Jawbone Up for a couple of weeks now I can give you guys some feedback. Before I jump into the feedback though, I recently received the Nike Fuelband as a gift! Wow! Now I can compare and contrast between the two and tell you which one I like best at the end…

Continue reading “Nike FuelBand vs Jawbone Up”

Why I Carry 3 Portable Hard Drives When I Travel

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People are always asking me about backup strategies and while I usually discuss my home/studio backups I rarely discuss my “on the road” backups. My MacBook Pro has a 768GB SSD internal drive. While SSDs tend to be more reliable than old school rotating platters, I’m still as paranoid as I’ve always been. I don’t back it up any less than I did before SSD. I’ve had two major data scares while traveling on business. The 1st was on a trip to Toronto several years ago to do a seminar. I was the main/only presenter and I had an audience of about 400 people. My presentation was going to start at 10AM and I was in the hotel connected to the event hall. I woke up that morning and did some work on my laptop before heading over to the hall. I closed my laptop and headed over giving myself just enough time to get there and plug in to the projector. I got there, plugged in and opened my laptop to a “blue screen”. I immediately thought “oh my God, if this thing doesn’t come up I’m screwed!” Although I had my files and fonts on a drive at the time and I could have used a colleague’s computer it would have taken no less than 30 minutes to get everything loaded and setup. It could have easily taken an hour or more if they didn’t have the right applications loaded. Luckily everything came back after a forced reboot. But what if it hadn’t?

Hard Drive #1: A Bootable Clone Backup

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A USB 3 and Firewire 800 Portable External Drive

After my experience above in Toronto I realized that simply having a backup of the data was not good enough. I need to be able to be up and running in 5 minutes or less in the event of a total drive failure. From that day forward I started carrying an external portable hard drive that was an exact clone of my internal drive. I update this clone before heading out on each trip. I use SuperDuper!, which is a fantastic utility to clone your drive from one to another. In the case of a blue screen or total drive failure I could plug in the clone backup drive and reboot directly from that drive. Since it’s a recent clone it would have all of my applications and demo/data files. Continue reading “Why I Carry 3 Portable Hard Drives When I Travel”

Adobe MAX Speaker Challenge Sweepstakes

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Everyone likes a good challenge, right? Here’s your chance to help me beat one of my colleagues AND win a free pass to Adobe MAX and VIP seating to our MAX Bash!

We’re kicking off our Adobe MAX Speaker Challenge on Twitter, and we’re giving you the opportunity to win a full conference pass to Adobe MAX and VIP seating to our MAX Bash.

You want in? Here’s the scoop! At Adobe MAX this year, if you could only choose one of these two sessions to attend, which would it be: my session, Creating an Engaging Web Design with Adobe Muse or Kevin Hoyt’s session, Animating the Web with HTML?

To cast your vote, head to Twitter and let us know using either #TerryandMuse (to vote for my session) or #KevinandWeb (to vote for Kevin Hoyt’s session). Everyone that takes part in the voting will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a full conference pass to Adobe MAX 2013 (which includes a complimentary annual subscription of Adobe Creative Cloud), and VIP seating at our MAX Bash. See our full MAX Speaker Challenge Sweepstakes official rules.

For more information on our Adobe MAX conference and to register today, visit MAX.Adobe.com. Be sure to use promo code MXSM13 to get a $300 discount.

Please help me win! I’m counting on you! Remember to use the hashtag #TerryandMuse. Thanks!

adobemax2013

Adobe Creative Cloud for Photographers: How To Publish Web Galleries from Lightroom to Creative Cloud

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In this episode of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast, Terry White shows photographers how they can take advantage of their Adobe Creative Cloud Memberships and the hosting included to publish Web Galleries directly from Lightroom 4.

Are you missing out on my Bonus Content?

See more of my Adobe Creative Suite Videos on my Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. This episode has a BONUS CLIP that is available only in the App! My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:

Learn Adobe Creative Suite with Terry White - Wizzard Media



My Travel Portrait Lighting Setup – Updated

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I usually do most of my photography work in my studio where I have access to great studio lighting by Elinchrom and Westcott. When I go on location locally I tend to use my Elinchrom Quadra Kit. However, when I go on the road traveling by air I usually travel with a speedlight or two and portable modifiers. My new modifier of choice is the New Rapid Box 26″ Octa. I’m a fan of octa shaped modifiers and having a truly portable one is going to be great. I got the chance to try it out this past weekend during my session at the Day of Photography conference and I loved it.

Here’s my setup

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Rapid Box – 26″ Octa

Nikon SB 910 speedlight – any speedlight will work.

2 PocketWizard PlusX Transceivers. While the light is mounted outside the box and therefore can be triggered using the Nikon Commander system built-in to most of their midrange and pro DSLRs, the Nikon system requires line of sight. Therefore, I use the NEW PocketWizard Plus X to give me greater range and positioning.

Lowel Uni-To Light stand 8′ (folds down to 21.5″)

Westcott X-Drop “Slate” Background Kit

Continue reading “My Travel Portrait Lighting Setup – Updated”

A Fantastic Week on the Adobe Create Now World Tour

Photo by Kevin Stohlmeyer
Photo by Kevin Stohlmeyer

 

Once again I wanted to pause for a few moments and thank all of you who came out for the Adobe Create Now World Tour! I enjoyed seeing you all in New Jersey, Baltimore, Milwaukee and Chicago. The venues were packed to capacity with almost every seat taken in every city. The reception was overwhelming. Here are a few quick captures from this week on the road…

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Photo by Kevin Stohlmeyer

Even after adding more capacity twice, Milwaukee still sold out faster than any other city!

Here’s a 49 second look at the Milwaukee event

Baltimore Crowd
Baltimore Crowd

Great turnout and great venue in Baltimore. Some decided to make the trip to see me a second time after seeing me in DC. Thanks!

Continue reading “A Fantastic Week on the Adobe Create Now World Tour”