Where is Ben?

Interview: Bert Monroy

Today marks the start of a new feature on WhereIsBen where I Interview significant people in the digital imaging industry.

The first interview is with Bert Monroy who is the best photo-realistic illustrator I have ever had the pleasure to meet. His images are simply amazing, especially when you know that they are all 100% hand made using programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. He's been creating digital art for over 20 years and started with a 128K Mac back in 1984. I featured a gallery of his work earlier this month.

Bert is also touring the country with his Creativity seminar and has multiple books available. I've known Bert for years and always learn something when he opens his mouth.

The interview can be found after the jump.

May Photoshop Seminars

My May class line up is listed below:

• May 6th    Photoshop for Photographers San Francisco

There's only one seminar in May because I'm revising my Photoshop Studio Techniques book.

Shoebox

If you want to organize your photographs and find Apple's iPhoto to be too basic and other programs (such as Extensis Portfolio and iView) to bee too complex, then check out Shoebox. It's a Mac only program that lets you easily organize your images in a very Mac-like way.

Photoshop for Video

If you use Photoshop to produce graphics that will be output to video, then you'll definitely want to check out www.PhotoshopForVideo.com. This site was created by Richard Harrington who is the author of Photoshop CS for Nonlinear Editors and is the person I call on when I have questions about outputting images to video. The Resources section of the site features will over an hour of free movies that describe how to create graphics for video.

Heading to Boston!

I'm heading to Boston, MA to present my one day Photoshop for Photographers seminar. If you're interested in attending, the seminar is from 10am until 5 pm on April 27th at the John B. Hynes Convention Center and the price is $99 for a full day of training.

Art Runs In The Family

My brother Nik obtained his PhD in Chemistry after studying at Columbia and Harvard and then one day just quit and became an artist. It looks like art runs in my family.

Visit his web site at www.e-dot.com (try to tell that to someone over the phone... "visit eee dash dot dot com") at see is wild creations including his awesome looking handmade lamps.

Before There Was Photoshop...

Take a walk down memory lane and learn how many of Photoshop's features date back to well before Photoshop was a product. For instance, the 'marching ants' that have been in Photoshop from the start actually started in MacPaint (along with undo and many other features)... so read the history of MacPaint and learn what the inspiration for the marching ants were.

Depth of Field Calculator

This web site allows you to plug in the specs for the camera/lens/aperture used for a shot and it returns information about the depth of field you should expect, including the following:
Near limit of acceptable sharpness
Far limit of acceptable sharpness
Total depth of field
Depth of field in front of subject
Depth of field behind subject
Hyperfocal distance
Circle of confusion for selected format

Making The Modern World

If you want to learn about the science and invention that helped form the last century, then go visit Making The Modern World. It's a very well done web site that features everything from 1870's navigational science to the the personal computers of the 60's and later. That means you can find photos of everything from the original Apple I computer to the Rubics Cube. You could spend days looking at all this stuff.

Photo to Movie

If you want to spice up your slide shows and add a little motion then checkout Photo to Movie. This software allows you to pan and zoom around your images (also known as the Ken Burns effect), make transitions and save the result as a movie. It's currently available on the Mac, but they are working on a Windows version (currently in beta).