News, Discounts, and some Inspiration

Happy Friday everyone! Yep, I know it’s not Friday for most of you but it is for me so I’m posting some extra stuff today since I’ll be off tomorrow.

First off, Jeff Revell of the Photo Walk Pro blog did a review of my Layers book. Make sure you poke around the site for a while when you stop by – lots of good stuff (I mean in addition to the review 🙂 ). Oh yeah, don’t forget I’m still signing copies for anyone who orders the book from Kelby Training’s website. So go ahead and participate in the “Make Matt’s Hand Hurt” campaign. (fyi… I’ve gotten lots of comments here on the blog from people who’ve already gotten the book but please keep ’em coming. I love that stuff!).

Next up, I want to let you know about a really cool discount. I know a lot of people that visit this site are NAPP members (and some of you are probably thinking about becoming one). Here’s a discount, that pertains to all photographers, that I just found out about but you’re going to have to act quickly. You may have heard about Nik Software’s Viveza, a new Photoshop plug-in. It’s really hard to explain what it does but it uses this “thing” called U Point Technology. Before you fall asleep from technical terms like that, you’ve got to see it in action. They’ve got a really quick 2 minute video that explains what this stuff is and I’ve got to say it’s really sweet. That’s not the news though. The news is that NAPP members (for 2 weeks only) are going to be able to save $50 off of the software. So if you’re a NAPP member you’ll have paid for half your membership right there. If you’re going to join, again, that takes care of half your membership right off the bat. Finally, this news is actually so new that the web pages aren’t set up yet. They will be early next week and I’ll make sure to post the link as soon as it happens. I wanted to let you know about it right away though, so you don’t go out and buy it this weekend if you were thinking about it.

Next up is some web gallery goodness.
– Sean McCormack has some new free galleries for Lightroom and you can find them here.
– The Turning Gate has a really cool Client Response web gallery. It let’s clients rate images with comments. Neat stuff! Here’s the link.

Finally, I’ll leave you with some inspirational photography. Take a look at Gregory Heisler’s portfolio. He concentrates on portraits and photographs mainly celebrities (the Quiet section was my favorite). However, knowing that neither you or I will likely be photographing the people he does, I always approach viewing galleries like this from another point – style, setting, expression, lighting and other factors aside from the celebrity. That way, I can start to get some ideas for my own work.

Well friends, that brings the week to a close for me. I’m taking Friday off from everything related to work (at least that’s the plan) and relaxing a bit. Of course the mayhem of little league/soccer games and kids birthday parties starts up on Saturday (you know, the usual weekend stuff) so it will be short lived. I wouldn’t trade it for the world though 🙂 Have a great weekend!
(photo credit: Gregory Heisler)