scottkelbyI have a confession: I am a Scott Kelby groupie (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). Scott is the editor-in-chief for Layers Magazine, Photoshop User magazine and the president of NAPP, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.

It all started when repairs to my van forced me to wait for hours, wandering through a local mall. It was in the web design section at Books-a-Million where I came across Photoshop Classic Effects: The Essential Effects Every User Needs to Know. Although I intended to peruse the content, it was the intros that drew me in, starting with the fake tutorial at the beginning. (If you’ve read any of Scott’s books, you know the intros have nothing to do with photography or design and everything to do with goofball humor.)

Once I got a DSLR camera, my next purchases were Scott’s The Digital Photography Book Volume 1 and Volume 2. There were so many “ahhh!” moments. My husband just smiled and rolled his eyes over comments like, “Scott Kelby has my best interests at heart.”

You see, Scott writes—both on his blog and in his books—in a conversational, friend-to-friend way. He’s an ace photographer and Photoshopper and wants you to be one, too. Instead of using mathematical formulas or charts that strip away the joy of learning and make your eyes roll back in your head, he just tells you what to do, plain and simple.

Scott’s not afraid to confess his errors: forgetting his memory card, failing to reset his image size or ISO, even accidentally leaving without his camera. Personally, I’m a bit of a ditz and it just makes me feel better knowing that sometimes he makes the same mistakes I do.

I should have his acronym, WHIMS, monogrammed on my camera strap. Scott made up WHIMS to help him remember to check his settings at the beginning of a shoot:

W: White balance check
H: Highlight warning turned on (to tell if portions of your shots are blown out, or overexposed)
I: ISO check (correct ISO for your surroundings)
M: Mode check (whether aperture priority, program, or manual mode)
S: Size (image size and quality settings)

I have a problem with only checking my WH_MS, or my _HIM_, or my WH_MS, or some other incomplete combination of the five. It’s the ones you don’t think you need to check, like image size, that will get you (and make you do stupid things like accidentally shoot in Small for much longer than you care to confess).

Without a doubt, the most surprising blog comment that I’ve ever received was from Scott on my photoblog (I don’t post there anymore, but I won’t delete it because good grief, people, there’s a comment from Scott Kelby over there!). There was something about a Scott Kelby stamp of approval on my photo that pushed me to develop it more. Recently it was selected for inclusion in the upcoming Blurb photo book from the iHeartFaces contest, and is supposed to be featured in an upcoming ad campaign for Adobe Lightroom software.

I got to meet Scott last year at Photoshop World! (Corey Barker is in the background, and I believe that Dave Cross‘s head is what looks like a lump on top of Scott’s):

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Related posts:
9 Days of NAPP Day 1: My NAPP Story
9 Days of NAPP Day 2: NAPP on Twitter
9 Days of NAPP Day 3: Matt Kloskowski and the Lightroom Killer Tips blog
9 Days of NAPP Day 4: KelbyTraining LIVE
9 Days of NAPP Day 5: NAPP Members’ Website
9 Days of NAPP Day 6: Corey Barker and Planet Photoshop
9 Days of NAPP Day 8: Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk
9 Days of NAPP Day 9: LIVE from Photoshop World!
I’m a NAPP Evangelist!


How do you win?

Leave a comment for a chance to win one of three prizes at the end of the “9 Days of NAPP” series! Tell us about an “ahhh!” moment that you’ve had while reading something Scott has written or while watching PhotoshopUser TV or D-Town. (A recent “ahhh!” moment for me was viewing the pics of his recent Tuscany trip that he took using a D60 and D5000)

Go visit his blog—you’re bound to find some juicy tidbit or inspiration. My only request is this: please leave the man a nice comment; he reads them all. For someone with such a fun and informative blog, sometimes he gets comments that would me go sit in the corner and cry. (For some people it’s obviously a power trip that they have the ability to leave rude comments on blogs.)

There will be three giveaways at the conclusion of the “9 Days of NAPP” post series, with winners selected from the comments on all nine posts: an autographed copy of Photoshop CS4 for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby, an autographed copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby, and the grand prize of a 1-year membership to NAPP!

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