MacWorld continues …
Another day at MacWorld. I took three sessions. The first was from Ben Chen, a photographer from Southern California, on “DVD montage on the go.” It focused on creating a “live DVD” primarily for wedding photography. He spoke about the need for an excellent digital assistant who would be one step behind the photographer. Once the photographer was finished in one area, for example, shooting the bride getting ready, the assistant would collect those cards, import the photos into the computer, and begin sorting them. The goal was at the end of the night there would be a DVD to present at the reception. Part of the class covered workflow, preparing things ahead of time – such as the music and graphics – and so on. While this isn’t for me, there was one tidbit of information I found extremely useful: The issue of music and copyright. Obviously using someone’s music is a copyright violation. But, get this: If you publish something with YouTube using a particularly piece of music, you immediately get an email from them stating that you are using so and so’s piece of copyrighted music. Then it extends permission to use this music. In turn, you allow others to view and republish your video clip. This is under something called “Universal Music Group and YouTube Forge Strategic Partnership” which came into effect October 2006. Thus, if you first publish on YouTube, you can then republish on your website without fear of copyright infringement. Excellent to know!
I took a session with Derrick Story on working more efficiently in Photoshop CS4. It was geared to photographers, with tips on importing, sorting, cataloging, correcting (if needed), and, eventually working in Photoshop, if needed. Another words, it took full advantage of Camera Raw and Bridge. I’m fluent with both so this session was much better suited for my needs. A great thing to learn in this was that metadata (copyright information) is no longer stripped in the Save for Web function.
On the show floor, many others were giving shorter sessions. Bert Monroy, was at the Peachpit booth. I’ve taken many classes with him over the years and highly recommend him. He does the most incredible artwork using Photoshop and Illustrator as his tools. He’s light years ahead of anything I’m capable of, but he is incredibly inspiring.
I then took a session with Rick Smolan, Harold David, Derrick Story, and Amit Gupta. It was the best session of the bunch, covering “the state of the art of digital photography” with each speaker talking about his take on things. Rick Smolan (that’s him on the left – bad photo, I know) spoke about his “Day in the Life” series of books. He approached some 35 publishers who all turned down his idea. Eventually a publisher accepted his idea, and some several million copies later, the series continues.
Derrick Story talked about various hardware. Many people often ask what’s a good small camera to use rather for those times when you don’t want to carry around a heavy DSLR. He answered: The Canon G9, the Canon G10, and the Panasonic LX3. They shoot RAW, decent video,and each has a good lens. The caveat is that the ISO shouldn’t go over 400 because of excess noise. Good to know.
Harold Davis talked about trends. He sees two: The ISO in DSLRs being so high that flash will no longer be used except for special effects (I’m a fan of fill flash and don’t plan on giving flash up anytime soon <g>); and photography being merged into a new art through combining digital photography and manipulation. However, many of us quilt makers and mixed media artists already know the power of digital tools! Amit Gupta from Photojojo talked about some of his favorite finds. I liked the bottle cap tripod and the white balance lens cap. Fun stuff.
In the middle of sessions, there is a huge area in the West building to relax.
Moscone at night … tomorrow is another day with more classes. I’m particularly looking forward to another panel session with digital artists.