Kelby-nated

A week or two ago I came across news that Scott Kelby was going to be doing a seminar in Boston. If you don't know him, let me sum it up this way: he is Photoshop Guru, if Guru stands for Geek Ruler of the Universe. Here's the very official description of the classes:

Kelby Training LIVE has just announced Scott Kelby’s Photoshop for Digital Photographers one-day seminar tour. It includes five classes, covering editing images in Adobe Camera Raw, portrait retouching techniques, shooting and creating HDR images, printing techniques that will help you get what you see on screen, as well as Scott’s very own step-by-step Photoshop editing workflow from start to finish.

I have his 7 points book, which covers the Raw editing he went over in this seminar in detail, and it's great. I texted my photography buddy APB that we needed to somehow convince our spouses that we should be granted parole to cross state lines for a day trip. (Yes, I got up at five, met A. at 6, and we drove to Bean town, attended the classes, and then drove home. Lonnnnnng day.)

I was a little bit annoyed with Scott, because of one phrase in his blog that I had an issue with, when he weighed in about Kelly Clarkson's photoshopped Shape magazine cover ("her battle with weight"... my comment over there, that THAT'S THE POINT THAT EVERYONE'S UPSET ABOUT, THEY MADE HER LOOK 25 LBS THINNER, ON A MAGAZINE WITH A HEADLINE ABOUT LOVING YOURSELF, MAYBE SHE'S ACTUALLY HAPPY THE WAY SHE IS.... brought me the first troll I've had in a while... ) - but I forgive him now, because he's so effing funny. There, I bet he can finally sleep nights.

And I have to tell you, the TomTom (a GPS navigating device, for my two British readers... hi guys!!!) rules Boston. Every intersection that I needed to turn at seemed to have 6 choices for which way I could go, and we made it to the convention center only about 20 minutes past my target, which left us plenty of time to check in, check out vendors, enter raffles we wouldn't win... and see ALL of the presentations.

Here's the thing. We owe an apology to the guy we sat next to. Because we laughed quietly but hysterically through a good portion of the classes. There were SO MANY "That's What She Said" setups during those presentations, we just couldn't believe he didn't know what he was saying. (The whole "ooooh, fingers!" bit for example.... ok, maybe you had to be there but when you're in that frame of mind, it's pretty easy to spot TWSS opportunites. ) The guy is VERY funny. I'm too tired to really do an adequate review and describe how entertaining it was to watch him tweak pictures, but he was hilarious. ("Too sezzy, too sezzy....." as he was moving the edge of a shirt over to be more modest... just little stuff like that made us want to bug his office. )

I definitely recommend the seminar ($99) to anyone who can get there - he's going around to various sites in the country (Philly and Tampa) in upcoming weeks. I learned a great deal... I came home and since I was wide awake from caffeine-ated driving, I started playing around in Lightroom 3 Beta and put some of what he taught us to good use (LR is similar to the Bridge component which he was using in the class to edit RAW format photographs). I'll definitely be using some of the portrait retouching techniques. Just not on pictures of Kelly Clarkson.

Unfortunately, when you put 400 people in a room all day, what do you get? I've got it! A cold.

I've got it.