Here’s a picture of my little man in better times. I took this in December 2007 during a day trip to St. Augustine, Florida. The sun was just setting and I managed to capture a beautiful pink sky and a great expression on Aidan. He’s such a ham! Aidan is still not doing well this a.m. so I took him in to see the doctor and come to find out he has an ear infection. We know have him juiced up with Motrin and antibiotics…hopefully I will be getting my magic man back complete with goofy smiles!
Scott and Michael over at The Digital Photography Show just got back from their trip to Las Vegas for the PMA convention. They were able to meet up with 9 lucky listeners of the show and give away tons of SWAG (freebies) from some of the vendors at the show. I am so jealous! No, not really! I am happy for everyone who got a chance to hang out with two of my favorite photog guys! If you havin’t already, make sure you subscribe to their show. It is one of the best sources of photography info around. It’s extremely relevant to the latest happenings and they get to interview the best of the best. Check out the show over here. I co-manage The Friends of the Digital Photography ShowFlickr Group – along with Frank (who really does everything)! I also manage the Photo Contests that The Digital Photography Show does every 6 weeks.
One thing that I am really excited about that Scott and Michael mentioned on the show this week was the announcement of Nik Software’s newest software called Viveza. It is AMAZING and it gets released in April. I have to share with you that I am a big fan of Nik Software. I use their Color Efex Pro 3.0plugin for Photoshop and their noise reduction software called Dfine 2.0 on every one of my photos. I used to collect Photoshop Actions but really, Nik’s Color Efex Pro is far more powerful and easier to use. Here is a linkto a recent post I did about Color Efex with some examples. I love the U-point technology which allows you to place markers on exactly the places that you want to effect instead of making layer masks, etc. The Viveza works just like Color Efex with the U-Point technology but this program works more with light and saturation. I just saw the Demo Video at their web site here and I can’t wait to download a FREE trial. Check it out here.
I managed to load Nikon’s CaptureNX on my Mac to see what all the hype is. The software came free with the Nikon D-300. Ughhh…another software program to learn. I found some great video tutorials online here at Nik Software that explained the power of this program. It looks amazing. I’m thinking why dosin’t Lightroom have some of this power under the hood. I think what I will try and do is take a few shots and compare the RAW processing in both Lightroom and CaptureNX. I will post my findings as soon as I do it. I will most likely save CaptureNX for my best photos that I want to print large. The idea of changing my work-flow from Lightroom to CaptureNX and all the cataloging is way down on the “to do” list. Frankly, I like Lightroom and I finally have a system that works great for me.
On another note, I was sad to hear that Chris Orwig is taking a long hiatus on his daily photography blog. I really looked forward to it everyday. He has been a great source of inspiration this past year for me and I have learned so much from his tutorials on Lynda.com. If you havn’t already..make sure you check out his Photo-shop for Digital Photographers CS3 and CS2 as well as his Lightroom tutorials here at Lynda.com. I am sure he is up to big and exciting things and I can’t wait to hear all about them when he is ready to share. He is planning on teaching a Flash class at Photoshop World in Orlando this April.
I think Aaron and I are just going to go to the EXPO at Photoshop World instead of going for the whole 3 days. We live only 2 hours away so we can just pop in for the expo. I really can’t justify the costs that will include the hotel, the $499 price tag for the convention, food, and the time off from work and home espeically after buying the D300. I don’t know what I can possibly learn from just 1 hour on the topic that I am interested in when I can sit back and relax and watch the tutorial online which are much more extensive and detailed…..and cheaper! It was fun going to the Scott Kelby Lightroom Workshop in Tampa but I already knew a lot of what was taught because I had read Kelby’s Lightroom book and watched Chris Orwig’s tutorial online. I would much rather spend $17.99 a month to watch all the tutorials at Kelbytraining.com on my time then spend hundreds of dollars to just get a taste. That’s just me. And that’s also me saying that the training videos at Kelbytrainig.com are the best there is. I can’t believe the collection of classes and instructors that are represented there. And for $17.99 a month to have access to all of it as well as the exercise files, you can’t beat it.
Photoshop World is well worth it if you want a chance to hang out with the best, taste all the many things you can do with Photoshop as well as meet some of your idols like Scott Kelby, Joe McNally, Moose Peterson, Laurie Excell, etc. I’ve already done that – and paid a hefty price for the privledge. So I think I’ll lay low on this one.
by Laurel
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