Category: Digital Photography

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Thanks for Attending My Westcott Top Pro Tour Event Last Night

If you attended my 2010 Westcott Top Pro Tour Event last night I want to take this opportunity to thank you! It was a blast doing this event and seeing everyone so engaged. I not only had fun but yes I learned a lot too. The evening started off with John from Westcott showing the 6 different lighting patterns and how light affects your subject. Although I've been doing this for years, I've never heard it or seen it explained that way and it clicked with the audience. I now have a whole new appreciation for my gold reflector. 🙂 Then it was my turn to show my complete end-to-end workflow when photographing a model. Once again I had the beautiful Shannon Bayless as my subject and not only did I shoot, but I gave the audience an opportunity to shoot with each of my setups.

We then got into image selection and management with Lightroom 3 as well as the final retouching techniques that I use in Photoshop CS5. This was the first time that I've been able to walk a class through the exact things that I do during a shoot all the way from Makeup by Renata to final client image delivery via Lightroom. I ended up going over my time by about 20 minutes and the telling sign for me was not a single person moved to leave 🙂 So I guessing you guys were getting something out of it.

Thanks again to Westcott for putting this tour together and I look forward to more opportunities like this to share my workflows with you.

 

Gear mentioned last night

Nikon D700

Nikon 70-200mm VRII f/2.8 lens

Westcott Spiderlite TD5

Westcott Modern Vintage Backgrounds

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3

Wacom Intuos 4 Small <-It's the one that's always in my bag. Yes, i have a medium and medium bluetooth too. Yes I like all 3. If I had to pick one it would be the bluetooth one.

1TB Portable Backup Drive

The Turning Gate Client Response Gallery for Lightroom 3

Model/Property Release Apps for iPhone/iPad – Contract Maker Pro (more customizable) & Easy Release (native iPad and iPhone version)

The long USB cable that failed me during my tethered shoot 🙂 All kidding aside I've been using this cable for about two years now and it has worked flawlessly up until last night. I have already replaced the one from last night with a new one that I had ordered and forgot to pack. Cables that you're winding and unwinding day in and day out don't last forever. My lesson learned is that I will now always have TWO of these in my camera bag as you never know when one is going to die.

 

Be sure to check the Westcott Top Pro Tour Schedule for the one coming to your area.

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Getting Started with DSLR Video for Photographers – Part 5 of 5

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD8rIl2JKg0

In the final installment of this series, Adobe Worldwide Evangelist Jason Levine takes you through the process of exporting/rendering your DSLR video/stills creations using the 64-bit Adobe Media Encoder. He'll talk about some of the most common formats for going to mobile devices, iPods, blu-ray discs as well as common formats for Web delivery. You'll learn about background rendering and the ability to 'queue' multiple versions of your video edits. Also featured: using *presets* in the Media Encoder for your favorite destinations (like YouTube, Vimeo, HDTV, etc)

Download a FREE fully functional 30 day Trial of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and work right along side Jason.

Continue reading “Getting Started with DSLR Video for Photographers – Part 5 of 5”

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Thanks Germany & Switzerland! Great CS5 Masters Tour

 

Yes, I even got to present in a real Castle! – Schloss Lenzburg Switzerland

photo by  Markus Dobbelfeld

Last week I wrapped up the Adobe CS5 Masters Tour with the last stop in Schloss Lenzberg Switzerland! I have to thank my overseas audience for a great tour. It was great seeing so many of you in Munich (sadly I didn't make it to Octoberfest or Photokina), Düsseldorf, Vienna, Hamburg and Zürich. We had a back to back world-wind schedule and as much as I loved the locations I visited, I didn't get a chance to enjoy the sites as much as I would have liked to. Nonetheless I had a great time!

photo by  Markus Dobbelfeld

 

See more of Markus' shots here.

Continue reading “Thanks Germany & Switzerland! Great CS5 Masters Tour”

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My Westcott Top Pro Tour Event is Thursday!

Westcott's 2010 Top Pro Tour is underway!  My tour stop will be this Thursday in Southfield Michigan on October 7th and I'm looking forward to seeing you this week. 

I'm looking forward to showing you my end to end studio photography workflow. See how I use the Spiderlite TD5, tips on working with models and lastly my Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 workflows including retouching, web gallery creation and delivery of the final images.

Save $20 when you register with code TPT9195. Register here


Continue reading “My Westcott Top Pro Tour Event is Thursday!”

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Guest Blog: Erik Bernskiold’s Photokina Wrap-up Report

 

There is a reason why photokina is only once every two years, it is a huge place to visit and get around. Have you been to Photoshop World? PhotoPlus Expo? To sum it up you would be able to fill these expos into the bottom floor of one hall. There are seven halls at Photokina and four of them are two floored! Imagine an entire floor filled with china, japan and hong kong companies, many of which are just copies of other vendors! It is crazy! Here are some highlights for me:

 

Yes, there are vendors…

There might be a reason as to why the show needs to have see seven halls, everyone wand I mean everyone is at photokina. While vendors like Canon, Nikon, Olympus etc. have almost an entire floor to themselves, smaller ones still have good sized booths and as you can guess, there are a lot of the small ones here! One of the main reasons to visit the show is to chat with vendors and get up to date on all the new gear that ends up being released in connection to Photokina, maybe even more so getting to chat with all the smaller vendors and finding new companies that you haven't heard about before that might stock your next favorite gadget.

 

Seeing the news!

Inevitably there are a bunch of new cameras being released before Photokina and this year was no exception. For me, the Nikon D7000 is a true highlight and a camera that is high up on my wishlist now that I got around to playing with it! It just kills, even the D300s is pretty much beaten by the D7000. Sure there were a lot more of the news from the show but you can find that on sites that are all about covering them (like 1001 Noisy Cameras) instead of me even trying to list it all here in a wrap-up.

 

Animoto

I caught up with the good guys over at Animoto and got a good demo of their software which makes it very easy to design a slick video slideshow to music. The photo slideshow that you can see above is all made by the animoto slideshow interface. Check them out!

 

Seminars

Even though photokina really is about the vendors that are exhibiting, there are a bunch of different seminars going on in the different booths. Big names such as Joe McNally and Vincent Versace were there and a special shoutout to Rufus Deuchler who did a great job presenting the CS5 news specific to what photographers can do with them, especially within InDesign. What can you say, the crowd loved what you can do in CS5.

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Do it yourself desktop stand for FaceTime calls

FaceTime Stand

I have really been enjoying using FaceTime to make FREE video calls back home while traveling abroad. Of course you need either an iPhone 4 or 4th generation iPod touch on either end and a Wi-Fi connection on both ends and you can talk and see as much as you want for FREE. It's been working extremely well! The one thing that I find to be a bit of a pain is actually holding the device. When just talking on the phone for long periods of time you can just lay it down and use speakerphone or a bluetooth headset as you roam around the room/multitask. However, with FaceTime you're going to not only want to hold the device, but you're also going to want to hold it up fairly high. Holding it down at a natural stomach level will probably yield some unflattering up the nose angles for your video. 

Then I got an idea

One evening while sitting and working at the desk in my hotel room I realized that not only was there a better way to do this, but I even had the necessary pieces with me to make it work. Ideally you want some sort of vertical stand for the iPhone 4 that lifts it up higher than the desk/table itself. I realized that I had both an iPhone 4 tripod holder AND a Gorillamobile in my computer bag. It took me all of 15 seconds to put the two together and I had an instant FaceTime stand that could be tilted and even attached to something higher if need be. It worked GREAT!

 

Here are the two pieces you need:

G-Design makes the iPhone 4 tripod holder. Unfortunately it's not designed for the iPod touch, but as long as you don't turn it upside down it should just hold it in place.

It fits the iPhone 4 very snuggly and you CAN turn it upside down or sideways if you need to.

The G-Design iPhone 4 Tripod holder is available here.

 

While the Tripod holder will go on just about any standard tripod, I find the Gorillamobile to be the smallest and most flexible in terms of standing it up or wrapping it around objects. It's so small in fact that I forgot that it was in my bag. So it's GREAT for travelers.

Get the Gorillamobile here.

 

Yes you can use FaceTime with a 4th Gen iPod touch too!

In case you missed it, you don't have to have an iPhone (and contract) to enjoy FaceTime. You can have this FREE video call goodness now with a 4th Generation iPod touch. It has the necessary front facing camera and can make the same FREE video calls over WiFi to other 4th gen iPod touch devices OR iPhone 4's. FaceTime on an iPod touch uses your registered email address to receive FaceTime calls as long as your on WiFi. You can make FaceTime calls to an iPhone 4 as long as you know their phone number or another 4th gen iPod touch as long as you have their "registered" email address.  Get the 32GB (don't waste your time with an 8GB model) iPod touch here.

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Adobe Releases Photoshop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9 for Mac/Windows

Adobe just took the wraps of the NEW Photoshop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9. Aside from the usual great new features this is the first release of Premiere Elements on the Mac! Woohoo! Here are the highlights:

Photoshop Elements 9

Premiere Elements 9

  • Now for both Mac and Windows
  • Animation Style Presets (like cartoon)
  • Share videos easily on Facebook
  • Optimized HD Editing!
  • Native HD support from DSLR video, Flip cameras and more tapeless formats
  • Easily fix Audio Problems
  • See the new features in action here.

 

Order Photoshop Elements 9 here

Order Premiere Elements 9 here

Save money and order the Photoshop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9 BUNDLE here.

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Getting Started with DSLR Video for Photographers – Part Three

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxaN2bWwxKU

 

 

Adobe's Worldwide Evangelist for Video and Audio, Jason Levine is back once again to give us his second installment on Getting Started With DSLR Video for Photographers.

Download a FREE fully functional 30 day Trial of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and work right along side Jason.

Continue reading “Getting Started with DSLR Video for Photographers – Part Three”