Day two of the conference started with Facets of the Night: Conjuring Atmosphere at Night and in Low Light.
Moderator: Jill Waterman
Panelists: Stewart Cohen, Chris Crisman, Chip Forelli, Todd Hido & Gerd Ludwig
Jill Waterman – http://www.newyearphotos.com
Stewart Cohen – http://www.stewartcohen.com
Chris Crisman – http://www.crismanphoto.com
Chip Forelli – http://www.chipforelli.com
Todd Hido – http://www.toddhido.com
Gerd Ludwig – http://www.gerdludwig.com
The panelists showed their work with night photography and the panel was excellent. Chip Forelli and Todd Hido exclusively work with film. Gerd Ludwig, Chris Crisman, and Stewart Cohen are working digitally. Chip Forelli does scan his negatives and performs curve adjustments with his scanned negatives in Photoshop. Their works were all amazing and they were all very different. It was great to see and examine their real-life projects as well as their tips, techniques, and unique approaches. I came out of the session inspired to get out and take some more night shots and expect that I will very soon.
The second session of the day was The Creative Composite by Julieanne Kost.
http://www.jkost.com
Ms. Kost is a Digital Imaging Evangelist for Adobe Systems. Her presentation focused on the creation of a creative composite and she demonstrated a creation from start to finish. I walked away with some useful tips regarding Photoshop CS4. Including working around some known bugs. CS4 will randomly send an attempt to merge images into the abyss. I have experienced this a lot and to see it take place during the demonstration and then see Kost aknowlege the problem and work around it was very useful. Kost did a great job of not only explaining the how but also the why behind the steps that she performs and I will be changing a few of my post processing techniques going forward.
The third and final session of the day was Starting Today, You’re a Brand: Building Your Brand & Your Business.
Moderator: Lynn Martin
Panelists: Ken Carbone, Shama Hyer, Corey Rich & Todd Wasserman
This session started out with Lynn Martin asking for a show of hands of how many people are making a living with Photography and about 25% of the audience raised their hands. The next set of questions asked the audience how many people have online profiles with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. With these questions the majority of the audience raised their hands. The session was very much a re-visit to an article published in Fast Company magazine August, 2007 – The Brand Called You by Tom Peters. I did not get much out of this session but it was interesting to see and hear how Facebook is very much a requirement for today’s business online identity. All of the panelists showed examples of how their Facebook profiles along with their Twitter accounts and they all stated how Facebook is increasingly responsible for new business.
After the conference I went to the famous Studio 54 to see Carrie Fisher in Wishful Drinking. The show was fantastic. I highly recommend seeing the show if you have the chance.
“If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.”
— Carrie Fisher
Final day of of the conference is tomorrow and I have two more sessions to attend. I expect my next post will be during my return flight home at 35,000 feet.