Dave Black summed it up nicely in the clos­ing com­ments of the show. Pho­to­shop World is like sum­mer camp for pho­tog­ra­phers. Never thought of it that way before, but he’s right. We gather, we make new friends, we do arts & crafts, we learn, we play, and then it’s over before you know it. This was my fourth con­sec­u­tive trip since I started going in the fall of 2009, and I’m hooked on it. In fact, I’ve already signed up for the next show this fall in Las Vegas. By sign­ing up dur­ing the show, you can save $200 off the full price, rather than just the $100 early-​bird reg­is­tra­tion discount.

So what keeps me com­ing back to this event every half-​year? Is it the oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten and learn, to par­tic­i­pate, or to make new friends? That ques­tion is a bit of a setup, since if’s all of the above and the fact that I have fun going each time.

That’s not to say that I don’t expe­ri­ence any dis­ap­point­ment dur­ing the show, but I excel at find­ing new ways to dis­ap­point myself. I have no com­plaints with the folks who put on the show. In fact, I’ve found the, to be more gra­cious and acces­si­ble to the show par­tic­i­pants than any other event I’ve attended. They spend time speak­ing with us, answer­ing ques­tions, or just hav­ing a lit­tle fun. For example:

RC & Ken — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Matt & Ken — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Larry & Ken — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

That’s Ken Toney in the photo you see being held by RC, Matt and Larry. Ken become an unof­fi­cial mas­cot dur­ing the show, mak­ing appear­ances on record­ings of D-​Town and The Grid. He couldn’t make it to Pho­to­shop World in per­son this time, so Michelle Hed­strom brought him in spirit (and print). I think Ken made some more appear­ances, but I wasn’t there to cap­ture all of them.

The Fash­ion Theme

Project Pho­to­shop — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Each year, Pho­to­shop World comes up with a new theme to kick off the show. My first year, it was foot­ball. Last year, a rock con­cert. This year was fash­ion. They all work, since each one is a great theme for pho­tog­ra­phy. The main stage for the open­ing cer­e­monies was a run­way fea­tur­ing mod­els wear­ing designs from stu­dents at the Inter­na­tional Acad­emy of Design & Tech­nol­ogy. I’m slightly famil­iar with them, as they’re a sis­ter school to one of my for­mer employ­ers (Le Cor­don Bleu).

The open­ing video was a take-​off on Project Run­way and fea­tured some of the folks from NAPP as design­ers. I was sort of root­ing for Brad Moore to win, but it didn’t work out that way.

One of the inter­est­ing aspects that I didn’t expect was a photo con­test among the alumni that had attended 4+ times and, oddly enough, that included me. I’d never shot a run­way show and there was no way to know exactly what light­ing or action would appear on-​stage. The win­ner would receive a new iPad 2. I made the final three, but my shot (shown last Fri­day) didn’t win the prize. A few folks asked me where I came up with that title. Quite sim­ply, it’s a line in the David Bowie song, “Fash­ion.”

Bal­loon Drop — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Before the show started, I looked around and noticed a big net full of bal­loons above the stage. The drop wasn’t a sur­prise to me, and I thought it was a cool visual expe­ri­ence for the run­way show. What hap­pened next, how­ever, I didn’t anticipate.

Scott Kelby came on stage and announced that the bal­loons were cour­tesy of spon­sor B&H, and that some of them had coupons inside for prizes. Then as he tried to con­tinue his speech, he was over­whelmed by the sound of pop­ping bal­loons. Hun­dreds of them. It was lit­er­ally a show-​stopper. Things even­tu­ally set­tled down and they con­tin­ued with Adobe’s pre­sen­ta­tion. Before clos­ing, Scott reminded folks about prizes in the bal­loons and the noise started all over again.

I’m guess­ing that the show this fall in Las Vegas will fea­ture con­fetti instead of a bal­loon drop. It’ll be quieter.

Arts & Crafts

If Pho­to­shop World is sum­mer camp, then the classes are the Arts & Crafts por­tion of the week. Each time, Pho­to­shop World includes a mix of old and new classes. I try not to repeat the same courses, but there are excep­tions. One excep­tion was a pair of courses taught by Joe McNally on small flash. I felt that I needed a refresher.

Dur­ing the first course, Joe ran into some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with the tether from his cam­era to the com­puter. How­ever, I think that Joe and his team han­dled it very well. We may have lost ten min­utes of time, but he used that time to inter­act with the audi­ence and also warn them that things like this can go wrong on a live shoot. I saw for myself that every­thing was work­ing per­fectly before Joe took the stage. His staff tested out the sys­tem and then it just failed when Joe picked up the cam­era. Shit hap­pens. Joe expressed his apolo­gies, but I think the audi­ence was very under­stand­ing and we still ended up with a great class. I was happy to get my small flash refresher and see some of the cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties of a sin­gle speed­light with some inter­est­ing modifiers.

I sat in a cou­ple of Scott Kelby’s classes on Travel Pho­tog­ra­phy and Por­trait Pho­tog­ra­phy. These classes didn’t focus so much on pho­to­graphic tech­niques, but rather, how to fin­ish the images in Pho­to­shop. The very first les­son Scott taught in the Travel Pho­tog­ra­phy class was so obvi­ous — and I had so obvi­ously missed it — that I was blown away by its sim­plic­ity and impact. That reminded me why I attend Pho­to­shop World. It’s very easy to get in your own rut and miss some great pos­si­bil­i­ties to dis­play your work.

So what was it that he showed that made me want to smack myself on the head for noth­ing think­ing of it? It was a tech­nique to force the eye to your sub­ject in a bright place. Quite sim­ply, he dupli­cated the layer and changed the Blend Mode to Mul­ti­ply to make it dark. He added a layer mask and then cre­ated a very large, soft brush (about 1500 pix­els) to touch on his sub­ject. Instant grad­ual light fall-​off and it directs your eye exactly where he wanted you to look. I’ve used tools like Nik’s Darken/​Lighten Cen­ter in Color Efex Pro to do some­thing sim­i­lar, but this was quicker, eas­ier, and offered much more con­trol than using a fil­ter. I felt like an idiot for not think­ing of it on my own.

Scott’s Por­trait Retouch­ing showed many new, quick work­flows to improve images, which coin­cided with his new book on the sub­ject. In fact, the first copies of the book were deliv­ered to Pho­to­shop World before they were avail­able on Ama­zon or other sources. I was sim­i­larly impressed with the lessons he taught in the course that I went down imme­di­ately to buy the book. I’m gen­er­ally not one to go for auto­graphs, but he men­tioned it in class and I decided to see if he was still there (I had to return for another event). Turns out mine was the first one he was offered to sign, but I’m sure he had plenty of other opportunities.

The Tal­ent Show

Big Elec­tric Cat — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

What’s sum­mer camp with­out a Tal­ent Show? There’s an After-​Hours party at each Pho­to­shop World, but this was the last time it would fea­ture Big Elec­tric Cat for the enter­tain­ment. I skipped this show last year in Orlando because I was stay­ing home — about 30 miles away from the con­ven­tion cen­ter — and talked myself out of dri­ving back & forth again for the show. This year, I decided it was worth the money to get a room in the area. Not only did it save my mileage, but also my san­ity. Events like this one are not only great enter­tain­ment, but they’re also a part of the com­mu­nity of Pho­to­shop World. It’s a bond­ing expe­ri­ence. Dozens of pho­tog­ra­phers are around the stage to get some con­cert pho­tos, peo­ple are danc­ing, and it’s gen­er­ally a good time all around.

If you’re on the fence about whether to go to the After-​Hours party at a future Pho­to­shop World, I’d sug­gest you go. Don’t focus on the cost and whether it’s “worth it” or not. The value comes in the fun of the evening. This was my sec­ond time attend­ing the party and I thought the band was great. There’s plenty of food, but the real value is in spend­ing some time with other Pho­to­shop World atten­dees. It’s just a fun time. What more can you expect from a party?

The Expo Floor

It seemed a bit smaller to me this time, but I got what I wanted from the Expo floor. The first thing to con­sider is that there are dis­counts to be found. I’ve always used this time to add to my col­lec­tion of Hood­man RAW cards. Four Pho­to­shop World con­fer­ences, four new 16GB Hood­man RAW CF cards. They aren’t cheap, but they’re fast and don’t fail. In fact, the man who sold my cards even asked if it was true that peo­ple held off on their pur­chases until this show to buy things. I con­firmed that was the case, not only buy­ing a 16GB CF card, but also a 16 GB RAW Steel SDHC card for my Coolpix P7000.

Next, there is train­ing avail­able on the Expo floor. Not only are there stages for addi­tional train­ing, but there are sched­uled events inside some of the ven­dor booths them­selves. I watched Matt Kloskowski in the Man­frotto booth. Scott Kelby taught there was well, and also in the Wacom booth.

West­cott Photo Booth — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Per­haps no one had more train­ing on the floor than West­cott. They once again pro­vided a num­ber of photo set designs and mod­els with var­i­ous themes, from ancient war­riors to fairy tale set­tings. Many times, they had instruc­tors at these booths to show peo­ple how to get the most out of the light­ing and their pho­tog­ra­phy. I have mixed feel­ings, think­ing that it was both a good idea and had some neg­a­tive aspects of it. How­ever, I’ll save that for a later post to dis­cuss in more detail. For now, I’ll say that I think West­cott has addressed my crit­i­cism of its prod­uct with the new TD6 lights and I have a more favor­able view to share. Are they good enough to sway me away from strobes? I’ll let you know tomorrow.

The Rav­en­ous One — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Over­all Thoughts

You can prob­a­bly tell that I enjoy Pho­to­shop World very much. That doesn’t mean that every­thing goes per­fectly. There were a few tech­ni­cal glitches here and there, and occa­sion­ally some things haven’t gone as expected. I think that’s inevitable in a live envi­ron­ment where so many of the actors — show staff and atten­dees — end up doing things that just aren’t fore­see­able. What impresses me about the NAPP staff is how well they adapt to these chang­ing cir­cum­stances and com­pen­sate for them. They truly want their guests to have a great experience, and they work quite hard to keep things rolling. They also remem­ber those who can’t be there, so a crew of folks cap­tures the events hap­pen­ing and cre­ates a series of images, videos and blog posts to help those folks stay con­nected. That takes great ded­i­ca­tion to cus­tomer satisfaction.

Attend­ing Pho­to­shop World is exhaust­ing. I don’t get enough sleep, food in the con­ven­tion cen­ter is mis­er­able, and on top of all that, we had some tremen­dous storms in Orlando dur­ing the week. I wouldn’t have missed it, though. What­ever whin­ing hap­pens is really incon­se­quen­tial in the over­all per­spec­tive of the event. There are so many inter­est­ing things are hap­pen­ing all over the place and you can’t catch it all, but you can try. Besides, that gives you some­thing to talk about with the friends you make at the event. “Did you see the Samu­rai pos­ing with the Geisha?” Damn! No, I missed it. How­ever, my new friend Craig Thoburn cap­tured it!

The com­mu­nity of peo­ple I meet at Pho­to­shop World is what keeps me com­ing back. I’m a hob­by­ist, so these trips are com­ing out of my vaca­tion time and the expenses are all mine. If it wasn’t a great expe­ri­ence, I wouldn’t con­tinue repeat­ing it twice each year. In fact, I took advan­tage of a show dis­count to sign up for the next Pho­to­shop World in Las Vegas at a reduced price. It’s become that impor­tant to me.

Dave Black was right. Pho­to­shop World is sum­mer camp for pho­tog­ra­phers. You go far away, learn new things, make new friends and con­nect with old ones, then come home exhausted. I love it.