Hi everyone! Having spent several weeks in Eugene, Oregon, we just moved a few hours north to Portland. I’ve been mostly focused on some work projects, and the vintage bus project. The big news this week is that we just announced Photoshop Week! Photoshop Week is the first conference-style event to be held at creativeLIVE, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. This is a live, online event, going on from Feb. 25th through March 2nd. With 12 instructors and over 40 classes, it’s going to be a great experience for all Photoshop users, whether you’re a photographer, graphic designer, or both.
Here are the sessions I’ll be teaching at Photoshop Week:
Photoshop Efficiency Boosters
Learn how to fly through Photoshop features with the utmost efficiency by taking advantage of all of Photoshop’s shortcuts, presets, customization and automation features. In this session you’ll see how to access the majority of Photoshop’s features using your keyboard and how to customize the features you use the most for greater efficiency. You’ll also find out about many hidden features that can increase you efficiency in Photoshop.
Getting Started with Actions
Learn how to automate repetitive or complex tasks by recording them as actions in Photoshop. You’ll learn everything needed to get started using Actions today as well as learning the most common issues that prevent them from being effectively implemented. You’ll learn how to troubleshoot and optimize any action as well as modify existing actions to customize them to your personal needs.
Intermediate and Advanced Actions
Learn how you can push actions to automate overly complex or difficult tasks. Use subroutines to make customization of complex actions easy. Learn how to implement the new conditional actions feature that Adobe introduced in late 2012. Also, get a glimpse of how you can overcome the limitations of actions with scripting.
Mastering Blending Modes
You’ve seen that menu… the one that includes choices like Multiply, Screen, Overlay and Hue. It’s found in many areas of Photoshop including at the top of the Layers panel. Learn how that single feature can open a new world of possibilities in your photo-editing tasks and design projects. Once you understand how each mode works and how they all relate to each other, you will see that blending modes are one of the single most useful features in all of Photoshop!
… my vintage bus project has been seeing consistent progress. The vent fans in the ceiling have been installed, all the engine-to-dash wiring has been cleaned up and mounted to the side wall to keep it out of the way, and the overly large rub rails that run down the length of the bus have been removed. They don’t go with the paint scheme I have planned, but might be replaced by small rub rails that are more similar to those found on Flxible Clippers and Visicoaches. The refrigerator that will be used in the bus also arrived this past week. I’ve been posting constant updates on the Creative Cruiser’s facebook page, and you can follow those HERE.
The new fridge for the vintage bus just arrived. It’s an Italian model from Vitrifrigo that features one drawer for freezer and one for fridge, as well as the upper fridge area. It offered the largest storage volume within the limited height/depth of the vintage bus.
And finally, I wrapped up the week in a very festive way… by attending the birthday party of my friend Kirsten, who happens to live in Portland. Kirsten works at Lensbaby, so I always see her at photography events and tradeshows, but hardly ever get to hang out with her outside the work arena. She had a great little shindig, where we got to catch up and celebrate.
Me and Kirsten at her birthday party in Portland. Kirsten shares my love for IPA-style beer, and she had some on tap at her party!
Hi Gang! I’m writing this post from New Jersey, where I’ll be spending the holiday week with Karen’s family. We started off the week in Eugene, Oregon, where my vintage bus is having its interior worked on. Before we left, I spent some time chatting with the gang at Paradise Coach, making plans for the beginning of the project. Paradise Coach has just finished a 2-year restoration of a 1947 Silverside bus. I did a lightpainting of that bus, which I included in last week’s post. Karen and I also created a video tour of that bus, so if you want to see the kind of work this shop does, check out the video below. The Silverside is a brand of bus I really love and considered buying back when I was in the market for a vintage bus.
On Wednesday, we flew out of Portland and made an overnight stop in Las Vegas before continuing to New Jersey. We stayed with my great friends Steve and Beverly and stayed up into the wee hours catching up with them. In the morning we boarded our flight to Philadelphia and later arrived at Karen’s parents’ house, where the holiday festivities were in full swing. The family has been spending a lot of time preparing for the holidays, and the next couple days should be great.
Karen’s gingerbread house. She and her sister make these every year.
I also got to do another lightpainting shoot in NJ. Our friend Carl, dubbed the “Wine Wizard,” is one of the winemakers at Heritage Vineyards and has an incredible wine cellar of his own. In the past, Karen and I have had the privilege of attending one of his incredible cellar wine dinners, where he shared some of the most amazing wine we had ever tasted. Carl will be moving back to Texas soon, and we wanted to photograph his wine cellar for him, as a nice memory he could take with him to his new house. I spent about an hour and half lightpainting the cellar, and it proved to be one of my more challenging lightpaints because of how reflective the bottles are, and because many of them had to be back-lit to make sure they showed up properly. You can see the image below. The entire shot was lit with only the red ribbon light that’s found on the top of the cellar rack and a LED Lenser P5R Flashlight, which is my favorite small lighting instrument.
This one was rather crazy since it’s the combination of no fewer than 160 shots. It was very difficult to light in such a small room with bottles that look black if you don’t either back-light the whites or side light the reds. Just imagine trying to stand somewhere inside to light an area without having your body in the shot.
The final lightpaint. This image is made up of no fewer than 160 shots. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Karen’s shot of me shooting. Of course, when I was ACTUALLY lightpainting, it was pitch black in the room.
If you’re interested in this type of photography, you can learn to lightpaint with my 94-page e-book, The Fine Art of Painting With Light. It’s only $9.97 and you can get it HERE. If you prefer to learn hands-on, I’ve got a workshop coming up in March called “Mastering HDR & Lightpainting.” You can learn more about that event and register HERE.
Well, now it’s time to get back to the holidays festivities. I hope you all have a great holiday season! Best wishes to you and your families!
Hey gang! If you read last week’s blog post, you know that we’re hunkered down near Eugene, Oregon. That’s where my vintage bus is awaiting work on its interior. It’s completely gutted at the moment, and is located in the shop where the interior project will take place. The guys at Paradise Coach just wrapped up their last bus project, one that they’ve been working on for about two years! That bus, a 1947 Silverside coach, just rolled out of the shop on Saturday, which means that my 1963 Flxible bus is next in line!
I’ve spent the past week working on the 3D model of the bus’ interior and will meet with Larry of Paradise Coach this week to start collaborating. I’d like the interior of the bus to feature a streamline design style, which should be a good mix of vintage and modern. That’s one of the things I’d like to convey to the gang at Paradise Coach, and I’ve been pulling out all my favorite books on the subject to use for reference.
Some of the streamline design books I was researching for my vintage bus project.
I’ve been working of the closet portion of the bus’ 3D model.
Aside from planning MY vintage bus, I did some lightpainting of that Silverside vintage bus that just rolled out. On the night before it was to leave the shop, I arranged a photo shoot and did a lightpainting of both the front and back. What’s interesting about this Silverside is that it’s one of the kinds of buses I was interested in buying back when I was in the market. I just like the overall look and style, and I think the lightpaint came out pretty darn good!
Speaking of lightpainting, we added a new workshop to the 2013 roster! This one is called Mastering HDR & Lightpainting and will be March 11-15 in Los Osos, CA. This unique course will be a double-feature week, combining my two photographic specialties. Once you feel comfortable with HDR and Lightpainting, then you’ll be able to expand your shooting range beyond the standard golden hour and capture idealized images regardless of what time of day you encounter an interesting subject. Click here to learn more about this workshop. If you can’t make the class, remember that you can learn lightpainting from my e-book, The Fine Art of Painting with Light (only $9.97).
This coming week, Karen and I will be flying to New Jersey to spend the holidays with her family, and then we’ll be flying to Hawaii to get married! More to come…
Ben: I'm a traveling Photoshop guru who loves to explore everything unique and extraordinary. I'm a photographer, former graphic designer and world traveler. Back on March 14th of 2006, I got sick of sitting still and waiting for my next vacation, so I sold 98% of my material possessions and started living on a tour bus ...for more visit my blog, photo site, or photoshop training site.
Karen: I’m a photographer and graphic designer with an aptitude for anything involving pixels. I love being on the move, exploring the world and capturing it all with my camera. I joined Ben living on the road January 24th, 2010. For more on my work and play, visit my blog or photo site.
