In the fall of 2013 I was doing a lot of listening to the podcast "The Candid Frame." It's one of my all-time favorite photography podcasts to listen to while I'm editing photos all day. If you haven't tuned in before, definitely give it a try. The host, Ibarionex, is a fantastic interviewer and always asks precisely the kinds of questions I really want to know. I'm not a big "gear-head" like some photographers, so the equipment used to create an image is less exciting to me. This is why I just love how Ibarionex really digs deep into the creative and emotional side of his guests' works - it's more about the story and why they made the image rather than how many mega pixels wide the picture is. (Not that there is even the slightest problem with being in the gear and techy side of photography, it's just not for me.)
Anyway, while binge-listening to The Candid Frame, I kept hearing about this "Photoshop World." If there was ever a place for me, it seemed like that would be the place. I looked into it and discovered that it's this crazy huge photography/Photoshop convention where obsessed little artists like me can go and soak up as much knowledge as they can possibly handle. Long story short, about a month later I was on a plane heading to Vegas for Photoshop World!!
Photoshop World is a creation of the Kelby Media Group. (That's Kelby as in "Scott Kelby" for all you photography enthusiasts living under a rock.) To get geared up for the conference, I started reading his blog posts and watching lots of their videos and live podcasts. Scott and the rest of his "Photoshop Guys" are constantly pumping out a stream of tips, tricks and knowledge. If by some chance you haven't already, I'd give them a Google-ing.
Anyway, I ended up winning two of the Guru Awards (their giant award show at the beginning of the conference), including Best of Show!!! ("Alice Returns," shown at the top of the post, was Best of Show.) So, that was exciting. You can read more about that here if you'd like. I made many new friends and learned a whole lot of fun techniques to add to my arsenal.
...I'm guessing by this point in the blog post you're glancing back up at the title to make sure you did in fact click the right article. You've probably seen the name of the post and dropped by to take a peek behind my creative curtain in hopes of gleaning a trick or two from my fantastical brain. So why the heck am I babbling on about podcasts and this Kelby guy?..... Great question. Wellllllll friends, I've been given the exciting opportunity to take over Scott Kelby's blog for a day as part of their "Guest Blog Wednesday Features!!" (YAAYYY I'm SUPER EXCITED!) SO stop reading this nonsense and hop on over there to take a look at the post I wrote in which I break down my process for creating my images.
