Friday News Stuff
Apr. 10
1:45 am
Happy Friday Everybody. Here’s what’s up:
- My Images in The New 2009 Westcott Catalog
First a big thank you to the FJ Westcott company—they featured two of my images (shown above) taken with their Spiderlite TD-5’s in their new 2009 lighting catalog (you can download a PDF version of their new catalog right here). As a side note: I actually got to meet photographer Michael Green (the other photographer featured on the same “Pros” page in the catalog); at Photoshop World, and we got to hang out for a while. A really great guy! Anyway, thanks again to Westcott—it’s truly an honor! - Dave’s Fix-It Challenge
Dave Cross has launched a brand new feature on his blog, “Dave Cross Online” called “Dave’s Thursday Fix-It Challenge,” where he posts a “messed up” photo (for lack of a better term) and he lets you download the image and then fix-it in Photoshop. The best fix wins! (and Dave post’s each week’s winner). First, here’s a link to the challenge itself, then this link lets you check out this week’s fixer-upper winner. Very cool idea, Dave! - Beginner’s Digital Photography Workshop in New York City
Photographer (and radio personality) Shawn King, along with Photoshop World instructor (and author of the book, “Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual), Lesa Snider, are teaching a Beginner’s Digital Photography Workshop in New York City coming up on April 24th at Tekserve (119 West 23rd Street). They’ll also be covering some editing in Photoshop Elements as well. Best of all; it’s only $25 per person! Here’s a link with all the details. 
- Episode #7 of D-Town TV is Now Available
We had some technical issues pretty much all day long yesterday (sorry ’bout that), but we finally got the latest episode up and running yesterday afternoon. This new episode features a special guest tip from Nikon’s manager of Nikon Professional Services, Scott Diussa, along with a bunch of other tips (and a great look at the Think Tank belt system I talked about earlier this week). We packed an awful lot of tips into this show, and I hope you’ll check it out right here.
- New “Ask Brad” Segment Debuts on DTownTV.com
The Amazing Brad Moore is the Technical Editor for D-Town TV, and this week we launched a new online segment called “Ask Brad.” This is where you can ask your Nikon DSLR-related questions, and every Monday Brad will pick one (or more) of the best questions to answer right there on the site. To ask your question, go to the DTownTV.com site, and click on the “Ask Brad” button at the top. - Upcoming Workshop from Landscape Legend Stephen Johnson
Famous digital landscape photographer Stephen Johnson is hosting a very unique workshop just outside Carmel, California, in some of the most beautiful coastline anywhere. Here’s how Stephen describes it: “We have a very special workshop coming up at Pt. Lobos State Reserve, one of the places I love the best in my home state of California. Just south of Carmel Carmal, this park of beautifully sculpted rocks, misty trails, pounding surf and aqua bays always draws me back, and helped lead me down a path toward an unflinching love of landscape photography.” If you ever get the chance to learn from Stephen, you’ll never forget it—he is amazing! Here’s a link with all the details, and how to sign up. - Go Back Up Your Photos. Now!
I just heard another story last week of a photographer who didn’t have a back-up of their photos, and she lost everything—-every photo she had taken in the last few years, including client work, family shots—everything—gone forever. Take this moment to protect the visual history of your life, and back up your images. Just drag them onto another hard drive. If you don’t have one; run over to Best Buy, pick one up, and back them up. It takes so much less effort than you’d think.
That’s it for this Friday. I hope you all have a wonderful, peace-filled Easter weekend, and we’ll see you back here on Monday.




















Hey Michael Green! So cool to see him recognized! We both had images up on a VH1 contest about 15 months ago we both got the top public vote in separate categories but we both lost the judges’ final pick (we were like wth?). He is a super-nice guy, helped me on the phone for two hours the day before leaving for Cancun to shoot the Ram’s Cheerleaders with tons of info about how to price my calendar quotes. Anyway, I’m getting carried away but I though he should at least been given a link to his site because he really is one of my favorite photographers and a really cool humble dude. Cheers Mike!
http://www.mjgphoto.net
Go check him out and have a great Easter everyone!
I’m a fan too! This guy has won Guru awards and been featured on the NAPP member site. And talk about helpful… he’s active in the NAPP forums and that’s where I got to spend time with him at a couple of Photoshop Worlds (the forum parties). A truly gifted artist, photographer, and the nicest guy you’d ever meet.
Matt, thanks for the link to his site.
Wow. Who do I thank first!?!?
Scott, you are an amazing person. That was very cool of you to mention me there. I added a link to your blog site, the least I could do. Also thank you for all of the time through the years you have given to me at the NAPP Expo’s, I know that you are a busy person there and you are always in demand but even still you’ve always been generous with your time for us and I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say thanks for that. I can’t even begin to describe the life changing effects the NAPP organization, staff, and long list of friends have had on me.
Matt and Larry, thank you very much for the kind words. What could be better than stumbling into a conversation that people are having about you, and seeing such great things said.
All of you just made my night!!!
Speaking of back ups… make sure you have one copy in another location. Keep one at home and one at work, or a friends house, or safety deposit box. It may sound extreme but even with the new Super Drobo if it’s all it one location and there’s a fire it will ALL melt. Have a good weekend everybody !
mike meyer
To Mike:
That’s great advice, Mike. You could put one Drobo at home, and one on a Carrier. (inside joke).
Have a great weekend!
-Scott
My buddy was The Fire Control Officer on the USS Eisenhower carrier. But lately he has been avoiding carriers. I wish he wasn’t. ( inside joke )
mike meyer
I agree that it is great to raise this point and to add to your comment, there are a ton of online backup solutions and with internet speeds increasing, using one of those relatively cheap ones is a no-brainer and makes you sleep a lot better at night!
Just back up all photos the other day….Thanks a lot for the Nikon DTown series. I am a Nikon user and I seem to forget all the “stuff” my camera will do. Great help to me….Thanks
I wrote Nikon a year ago and suggested they do what you are doing. I guess it fell on dead ears at Nikon…..The way you make it simple and clear….very nice for a guy who can complicate a straight pin.
Ken in KY
As Larry Becker said and I quote “A truly gifted artist, photographer, and the nicest guy you’d ever meet”. I totally agree, one of the nicest, talented guy you’ll ever meet.
Nice of Scott to mention him in his blog.
Congrats Scott on being in the Westcott catalogue. I personally think the photography you’ve been showing are a lot better than a couple of years ago and I gotto give you the creds on improving—however known you are!
I recently purchased some pro external drives from Other World Computing (which is a heavily weighted Mac site) and these are some really great drives. I purchased two 1.5 TB drives because since we have a daughter now, the camcorder (Canon HF S10) when shooting 2 minutes of highest quality video will take up almost 2GB; therefore, you can fill up a 100GB drive easily on one birthday party.
It would be interesting to see what people are doing with their drives that are getting too small. The idea is that your storage needs just grow and grow, so I guess people end up finding the photos they think are not needed so often and put them on disc or a hard drive and disconnect it; however, I guess with LR, you can then still view and sort them to use metadata.
I recently went through this outgrowing phase and hope to be set for 3-4 years with 1.5TB of space (I bought two 1.5TB drives, so I have a BACKUP:)). I expect by the time I fill 1.5TB, 4-5TB drives will be out and I can just stripe RAID the two I have now to be 3TB, as a main drive and a single 3 or 5TB drive as backup.
I wonder who is addressing this stuff?
care to share the lighting set up on the high key photo with the spiderlites above scott?
Scott, like you I can’t recommend Stephen Johnson’s workshops highly enough. I took a Black and White print workshop with him about 4 weeks ago and it really pushed me to a higher level
Why is your training site so un user friendly?
It is so hard to get back to where you left off. Or am I missing something?
Sincerely
Joe
Wow, I think I clicked every one of those links!
I’m curious as to what happened to that photographers drive? I’d be surprised if nothing could be saved from it.. I’ve seen data recovered from drives that were in raging house fires, you just have to find a specialist to do it.. not always dirt cheap, but obviously with something that important perhaps worth it?
I found out all about back-ups (not just at home) whilst on an Easter trip to a picturesque Greek island. If you keep all your pix on one drive back in your hotel room, whilst attending Mass…
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1310192/my_big_fat_greek_firework_battle/