Today We Celebrate: The Springs of Hope Kenya Orphanage has opened its doors! - Nov 06

Source: Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider Blog » Photoshop & Digital Photography Techniques, Tutorials, Books, Reviews & More by Scott

I am absolutely thrilled to share that last night I got an email from my friend Molly Bail from Springs of Hope, Kenya, to let me know that today they’re welcoming the first children to the Orphanage that you, the readers of this blog, helped to build.

Your contributions literally helped finish the roof on this orphanage earlier this year, and then later you helped buy the beds, furniture, and kitchen appliances, and now today there are homeless children that are homeless no more because of your gracious generosity. I am incredibly thrilled, and humbled at what you all have done in supporting the construction of this Orphanage.

In her email, Molly calls today’s opening a “soft opening” because they are still dealing with some electrical issues, but the first children arrive today, and are sleeping under a roof you helped build tonight. To me, that’s a grand opening indeed. (The photo’s above are from Molly, and the captions are hers as well).

It’s been a real struggle for Molly and Joseph to build this orphanage half way around the world, and in the past few months they have really struggled to clear the final hurdles, approvals, and mountains of red tape like you would not believe, but today we have something wonderful to celebrate.

Whatever else happens in your day, and whatever hurdles life throws at you today, just remember that because of your contributions, a homeless child now has a home, food, and has two people in Molly and Joesph that will love and protect them.

Honestly, there’s no adequate way to thank you all for what you’ve done. The phase “Thank you” isn’t enough, but thank you.

I might have to order one of these - Nov 06

Source: Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider Blog » Photoshop & Digital Photography Techniques, Tutorials, Books, Reviews & More by Scott

I ran across a site with this clever t-shirt this weekend, and thought you guys would get a kick out of it.

You can order yours right here.

Have a great weekend!

-Scott

Thursday News Stuffage - Nov 04

Source: Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider Blog » Photoshop & Digital Photography Techniques, Tutorials, Books, Reviews & More by Scott

Hi gang. First, I want to thank Tyler Stableford for a tremendously inspiring post yesterday. His post is really what it’s all about. When I met Tyler at Photo Plus Expo, I knew I had met a great photographer, but as he’s demonstrated through this actions, he’s much more than that, and I’m even more impressed. If you didn’t watch his video yesterday, please take a moment to watch it right now. It’s incredibly powerful, and you’ll be glad you did.

Cool new iPhone App for Adobe Freaks (like me)
My buddy Terry White has just released his own iPhone App (you knew it was only a matter of time, right?), that is already getting rave reviews. The App lets you watch Terry’s top-ranked “Creative Suite Podcast” right on your phone, but the advantage of using the App (as opposed to just subscribing to the Podcast and watching it on your iPhone) is that with the App, you get special Bonus Content, created especially for the iPhone App users, which won’t be available anywhere else. Plus, the App is a bargain—-it’s just $1.99 (less than a cup of coffee). Here’s the link to it. Totally cool, and very well designed Way to go Terry—you should write a book on the iPhone (Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Borders).

Thieves are targeting Wedding Photographers
This particular story, passed on to me by a reader: Cary Talbot, is about how Wedding Photographers in the Salt Lake City, Utah area are having their gear stolen after on location wedding shoots, but everyone should read this story because seeing how they’re doing it may well save your gear. Here’s the link (thanks Cary for sending this one our way).

Review of Volume 3
I just ran across this review of  “The Digital Photography Book, Volume 3” over at Stephen’s Photography Tips. Here’s the link.

That’s it for today
Hope you have a great day, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for a Friday wrap up (and something really cute, too!)

It’s “Guest Blog Wednesday” featuring Tyler Stableford! - Nov 03

Source: Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider Blog » Photoshop & Digital Photography Techniques, Tutorials, Books, Reviews & More by Brad

Hi all,

It’s a real honor to be writing today, and I want to thank Scott and Brad for the bandwidth. I’d like to share a behind-the-scenes story about the most exciting project of my career.

I’m an adventure photographer in Aspen, Colorado. When I first picked up a camera 15 years ago, I was tickled at the idea of being paid to rock climb, ski and travel. I certainly didn’t get into photography to “make a difference.” Indeed, from a cynical bent, you could say that I shoot leisure sports — images of rich white people overindulging in the outdoors.

Last winter, however, I turned my lens in the other direction. My wife and I were about to adopt a young boy from Ethiopia. As I read about the country’s poverty crisis (it’s one of the 10 poorest places in the world, with a mind-boggling 5 million orphans), I had pangs of guilt over our decision. We were spending thousands of dollars to haul a child to America when, one could argue, the money could go much further keeping at-risk parents alive. If we really cared about the welfare of our new boy or his Ethiopian peers, wouldn’t it be better to keep his family healthy and fed in the first place, rather than opportunistically adopting him as an orphan?

Sadly, that option wasn’t possible in the case of our boy, but along the way I learned about some impressive work the adoption agency was doing to help stop the orphan crisis. Wide Horizons For Children runs a nonreligious humanitarian-aid program that builds health clinics, clean-water projects and schools; and it sponsors destitute children and orphans to help them thrive in their home communities, rather than being placed for adoption.

Like many nonprofits, Wide Horizons’ work is world-class but their marketing materials are anything but. Poorly lit snapshots comprised the bulk of their campaign. I volunteered to shoot a multimedia fundraiser, documenting Wide Horizon’s outreach in Ethiopia’s remote and hard-hit communities.

And that’s how I found myself in northern Ethiopia’s war zone of Rama last December, one of the poorest regions on earth. Here, I faced an entirely real marketing question: What type of images or video would compel donors to open their wallets?

Before I left, a friend at Stanford University’s Center For Social Innovation shared a fundraising secret. It turns out that donors are moved not by staggering statistics or photos of mass suffering, but by an image of a single human being. People feel helpless when confronted with the enormity of Africa’s need (and for good reason) — yet when presented with the story and portrait of one individual whose life can be directly improved, checks are signed.

That simple fact became my creed — get in tight and focus compassionately on every person I shot. I brought two Canon 5D Mark II cameras, four lenses, a tiny carbon-fiber tripod and a CompactFlash audio recorder. I alternated between shooting stills and video whenever one seemed more powerful than the other, and used the week to learn video skills. (You can judge whether I chose stills vs. video appropriately in the final video below — I am sure there are always better ways!). I traveled with local Wide Horizons workers, Ethiopians who had grown up in the very villages we were working in, who translated our interviews.

To start, I wanted to introduce Ethiopia as a beautiful country, one with rich culture and tourism. So I shot scenes like this.

I next wanted to introduce hardship and poverty on an individual level, using faces like this one of 12-year-old Frehiwot Abera to hit the point home. Frehiwot lives in Rama, a town ravaged by war, famine and AIDS. She lost both of her parents before she was 5, and lives with her unemployed aunt.

Frehiwot is one of the “lucky” ones fortunate enough to receive a child sponsorship through Wide Horizons. An American family spends about $1 per day to help provide her with food, school fees and economic counseling that has helped her launch an entrepreneurial venture of raising sheep and chickens for sale. Frehiwot’s story of hardship, and her economic turnaround, moved me to tears.

Yet for every sponsored kid, there are many more in need. To succeed in my goal, I had to find a way to show donors a compelling reason to give more. That’s when my job got hard.

I introduced myself to sick, destitute people on the street, and asked if I could take their pictures. I felt like an ambulance chaser, a paparazzi of the poor. Entire streets of people would stop to stare at me as I lay down next to an ailing woman on the sidewalk and trained my lens on her. The only thing that carried me through these humbling, self-conscious shoots was the hope that my images just might hit home with potential donors.

I shot 20-year-old Bethlehem Demesy and her 4-year-old son Nahom in a landfill, where home is an overturned dumpster. Bethlehem’s parents died in her early teens; begging and prostitution for pennies have provided her only means of survival, placing her at extreme risk for HIV infection. (In a country with 30% unemployment, there’s no “career center” for orphaned teens to turn to). I pray that Bethlehem’s story will encourage donors to see the impact that a child sponsorship could have for a teenage girl at risk.

Finally, I wanted to show the powerful work Wide Horizons was doing to build health clinics, schools and water systems. This was the fun part, as the townspeople were bubbling over with excitement about the projects. Shooting in Ethiopia was the greatest adventure-travel trip of my life — the agency workers introduced me to wonderful people whom I never would have met as a tourist.

I returned home with a week’s worth of material (and an Ethiopian son named Masamo; my wife joined me in Addis Ababa after the shoot for the adoption). As a stills photographer, I had NO idea what I was getting into with producing a multimedia video. Who knew it was a hundred times more work than editing stills?!

Salvation came, as it always seems to do, in an unexpected way. At a commercial portfolio review last winter with Kari Niessink, the head art buyer at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, I told her about my Ethiopian project. Kari championed my cause, asking her colleagues Alex Bogusky and David Rolfe if they could produce the video pro-bono. (CP+B is arguably the country’s top ad agency, having been named “Ad Agency of the Year” 12 times.) They said yes — I couldn’t believe my luck!

CP+B integrated editor Nick Schneider and producer Liisa Juola did the heavy yet graceful lifting in bringing the video to life. All told, CP+B donated approximately 200 hours of time to the project.

I debuted the 7-minute video at Wide Horizons’ fundraiser in Boston and New York, where it garnered pledges for over $300,000 to construct new health clinics.

In the process, I realized that as photographers and designers, we are blessed with the skills to create campaigns that will raise far more money than we could ever donate personally.

If you’re still reading this blog, the video is viewable below. There is a larger-res version on my website, and more stories, here.

I offer my sincere thanks to the people who opened their homes and shared their life stories for this project. Meeting those Ethiopians who have endured overwhelming hardship has filled me with an unshakable humility. It was the greatest honor of my life.

-Tyler Stableford
tylerstableford.com
tylerstableford.com/news

Tuesday Catch-up - Nov 02

Source: Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider Blog » Photoshop & Digital Photography Techniques, Tutorials, Books, Reviews & More by Scott

Hi Folks, and greetings from 37,000 feet, somewhere over Pennsylvania (courtesy of Delta’s new in-flight ‘go-go” wi-fi Internet service). I’m totally beat, so I’m gonna keep this one short and sweet (that way, I can take a nap before I have to change planes for the 2nd leg back home).

Philly rocked!
First, thanks to everybody (nearly 600 of you), who came out to my Philadelphia seminar yesterday. What a great group to present to! It’s been years since I’ve been to Philly, but I’ll make sure it’s much shorter before my next visit!

Adobe has a challenge
After teaching this seminar in Boston and now Philadelphia, it has really become even more clear to me that there’s just a ton of confusion about the differences between Lightroom and Photoshop. Most of the photographers I talked to yesterday already use Lightroom, but the ones that didn’t, have no idea what Lightroom really does. Most told me they didn’t need it because they thought Lightroom is just a replacement for the Bridge, and virtually none of them had any idea that Lightroom’s Develop module IS Camera Raw. Adobe really has a challenge in getting the word out about the differences between the two, and how they work together, and when you use which and for what.

Eric got a Cheetah Stand
Remember last week when I talked about the Cheetahstand collapsing lightstand? I asked for your comments about how you might use the stand, and well, part of the reason was; I had an extra Cheetahstand, and I thought I would choose one of the folks that took to the time to comment to have that free stand, and that person was Eric Dousay from Little Rock Arkansas. Eric, your stand is on its way!

Photoshop User TV
We’re scheduled to shoot the first episode of our new season of Photoshop User TV today (yes, the set is finally done), and if all goes well, it’ll air next week. In the meantime, you can check out some of the mini-highlight episodes we’ve been posting, along with our “Live from Photoshop World” episode at PhotoshopUserTV.com.

Some amazing photos from China’s 60th Anniversary of Communist Rule
One of my readers’s sent me this link to Boston.com’s article with photos from China’s celebration marking their 60th anniversary, and the photo are amazing (it’s a mixture of beautiful color, and lots of scary-looking military hardware at the same time). It’s definitely worth seeing (though it might make you sleep a little uneasy). Here’s the link.

Tomorrow’s Special Guest Blogger is….
…one kick-butt adventure photographer; and Canon Explorer of Light, Tyler Stableford.

You guys probably remember me raving about Tyler’s work after seeing his presentation in Canon’s booth at Photo Plus Expo in New York, and then Brad took it upon himself to quickly contact Tyler and see if he would do us the honor of being a Guest Blogger here, and son-of-a-gun if we don’t have him here tomorrow. How cool is that! (Way to go, Braddo!). I’ll be here checking it out myself tomorrow, but in the meantime check out Tyler’s portfolio right here.

That’s it from 37,00 feet
Hope you all have a fantastic Tuesday!!!