SK Photowalk Winner Announced

There were a lot of great images uploaded to the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk Melbourne, FL page that were taken during the annual event. Many of the attendees emailed in their selections for the best image taken and the winner of the tally was “Bike Path” taken by Scott Larson.

Congrats to Scott for a job well done! Best of luck in the finals!

Photoshop Insider Blog

Today finds V featured on Scott Kelby’s blog as this weeks guest blogger. Check out his post on creative mass photoshoots and if you have any questions about what he presents, leave it as a comment on that post and he will answer it!

Vanelli Invades Los Angeles

Fresh back from Photoshop World 2009 in Boston, Vanelli spent a few weeks at home and is now back on the road again. This time he traveled out to Los Angeles to spend a few days with Michael Kubeisy to help launch Michael’s new website and, of course, do some shooting! Even if you haven’t heard of Michael Kubeisy I am sure you’ve seen some of his work. If not then you probably do not have a TV and do not look at billboard advertisements! Michael is the man behind a lot of the photography work done on the major nighttime drama TV shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, Private Practice, Boston Legal, Scrubs, The Unit, Lost, NCIS, and the list goes on and on! He also did a lot of the photography work for the features The Guardian, Million Dollar Baby, and MI:3. Seriously… when it comes to Hollywood TV photography… Michael Kubeisy is the name you will hear!

As always, Vanelli’s trip isn’t just all work and no play. He has been having a blast spending time with Michael and his family. They went to the set of CSI:Crime Scene Investigation yesterday and today they are scheduled to shoot on the set of NCIS. My wife Heather Reinert, a talented graphic designer, has been a huge fan of Mark Harmon for many years so she has been bugging me to make sure Vanelli knows to get his autograph for her if he gets the chance. There is also a large cast party this evening that they will be covering… I wish I could be there for that. Not to meet all the stars but to watch how they all react to Vanelli. Come on… you have all seen him at Photoshop World… can you image him in the same ballroom as a ton of the biggest stars in Hollywood right now? Just wait… next thing you know you are going to be seeing Vanelli walking around the various award shows wearing a security t-shirt and making the stars do Hula-Hoop races on the red carpet!! There has also been rumors that he is going to stay an extra day to do a combined shoot with Vincent Versace, Ben Willmore, and Jack Davies. Yes… Vanelli is going to be out shooting with Ben “The Man of HDR Photography” Willmore and I am stuck here in Florida telling all of you about it. I am going to wear a shirt to Photoshop World in Las Vegas that reads “CAUTION: Disgruntled Photographers Assistant”.

– Terry Reinert

Photoshop World 2009 Boston : Day 1

I received another dispatch from Vanelli yesterday of his Photoshop World day 1 experience but didn’t have time to write it up until this morning. Sorry about that! But it is good that I waited until now to go through it… he recorded everything at 2am so it has been very interesting going through it, trying to make sense of it all, and getting it translated for posting here. As one of his Black Belt’s I wouldn’t dare suggest that he skip his 5am workouts this week so that he isn’t so tired at the end of the day…. but again, I wouldn’t dare suggest something like that!!

Are you ready for today’s ride into the Mind of Vanelli? I hope so cause here we go!!

Vanelli is having trouble finding his notes on Ben Willmore’s class on “Mastering the New Adjustment and Masking Panels” and Jack Davis’s class “Lightroom 2 Enhancement Effects with Presets”. Jack Davis is the preset king… he has a preset for everything! His philosphy is that anything you do in Photoshop, create a preset so that you can go back and immediately do the same effect on any other photo. During the class, Jack gave away hundreds of his own presets to conference attendees. He tells everyone to take his presets, adjust them to fit your own needs, and then save them as a new preset. Then jokingly he added that you could them sell them on eBay as your own. We all know Ben Willmore as a guru when it comes to photography. But he has really advanced his photography in recent times in his ability to capture an image and the wide range of colors in a scene.

Vanelli’s last class of the day was with Vincent Versace on sharpening a blured photo. Versace went through a very intesive action that he made that brings back that sharpness. In order to explain what all he did you would have to talk to him directly as it was that intensive. But here is the theory to give you a general idea… As usual you follow the same process as other photos… get rid of the noise first, then do all your enhancement techniques, and then run the unsharp mask at the very end before you save the file. High Pass filter and set that layer to soft light. He would do this multiple times to build up the sharpening. The amount of sharpening that he does all depends on how he is going to print or display the image.

A few quotes from Versace that Vanelli really likes… “Don’t confuse workflow for habits.” and “Think globally; global to granular.“

Vanelli apologizes to everyone for losing his notes for those two classes but said he is going to find them and provide more information on those classes soon.

I want to take a second to throw my own words in here to quickly discuss the two quotes that Vanelli picked up from Versace. If you are familiar with what a workflow is, it is basically the step-by-step process you follow when processing an image. When you constant follow the same procedure it gets habit forming and you miss out on taking advange of new techniques or processes that could benefit what you are doing. For example, I used to have one workflow. I used it for everything; photoshoots with models, HDR landscapes, etc. One day I realized that I could be saving a ton of time in Lightroom 2 by organizing my HDR bracketed images in a different way than my portrait work with models. So do not form a habit around your workflow. Be aware of what you are doing and read up on what the pro’s are doing. If you read something good, adopt it into your workflow. If you find that you are doing something better than the pro’s, write a blog on it or post it as a comment on other blogs! The key is that your workflow is YOUR workflow… do what works best for you… But be careful not to form a habit around it and not adopt better techniques.

As for the second quote, I think the idea there is to start on an image zoomed out looking at the image as a whole. Do whatever adjustments you think are needed to the image as a whole. Then start looking at smaller parts of the image and processing just those areas using layers, adjustments, and masking. Don’t get me wrong… you do need to look at the image as a whole when adjusting each area to make sure that your composition isn’t negatively affected by local changes. I would be very interested in hearing more about this from Vanelli or Versace to get a clear picture of exactly what Versache is recommending.

I should have the Day 2 dispatches sometime today and will get them posted shortly after I receive them. I know yesterday was a big day for Vanelli with Midnight Madness and all. I’ve only heard bits and peices so far but I heard it was a riot. Stay tuned!!

Photoshop World 2009 Boston : Day -1

I spoke with Vanelli this evening about what all he experienced in Boston at Photoshop World during the Pre-Conference workshops. There is a lot going on up there and I wish my schedule had worked out where I could join him. But hey, since I am not there that means I can share with everyone else who couldn’t make it exactly what is going on with him at the conference. So, in my own words interpreting Vanelli’s own words… this is what we missed at Photoshop World today…

Vanelli got an unbelivable opportunity to review Sandy Foster’s portfolio today. She is an incredible street photographer and he went through her photos from Paris and China. He loves how she is able to capture the moment with people. She likes to observe from a distance and capture that special shot from outside of the event. What he learned from her is patience… define your scene and wait and let the scene unfold before your lens. His favorite shot is of a Chinease man walking down the street with an umbrella. She said she had to run down the street to get in position. He had his head down the whole time but then lifted his head at the last second and she nailed the shot.

After that Vanelli and the gang went to Debby Krim’s Art Gallery. Her floral arrangement works are amazing and she is well known throughout Boston for her passion of photography and her use of natural light and light modifies. Many of her photos can be seen in local stores. She has built a very good reputation on her use of color in her compositions. He really enjoyed spending time walking around the gallery and seeing everything that she had on display.

Make sure you check out both of their websites to see all they have to offer.

I know that Vanelli spent the rest of the afternoon and evening doing the pre-conferance photography workshop with Joe McNally and Moose Peterson. I have not heard from him yet about what he learned with them which means he is either still out shooting or is still too excited about all the things he learned to give me a call. So I will make sure to virtually beat the information out of him tomorrow when he calls and get that posted at the beginning of tomorrows update. So make sure to check back in tomorrow for the update so we can all continue to live vicariously through Vanelli for the next few days!

Edit: This was actually day -1 and not day 0.

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