PSW12 Midnight Madness Oreo Eating Contest

Here’s a quick iPhone video of the DC Photoshop World 2012 Midnight Madness Oreo Eating Contest.

You take an Oreo cookie, split it in two, eat the plain wafer side, and then stick the frosted side to your forehead. The idea is to get the rest of the cookie in your mouth without using your hands.

You can see team Europe cheating as Frank Doorhof assists his team by popping the Oreos in each of the team players’ mouths. Boo! They tried to say it wasn’t cheating because each player did not use their own hand to eat the cookie. What do you think?

Peg wins the PSW12 Midnight Madness Oreo cookie contest

Photoshop World 2012 is History

After years of saying I was going to make it to Photoshop World I finally did. I had no excuses left since this year’s east coast Photoshop World was held close to home in Washington, DC. What a blast it was! Photoshop is a combination of learning, entertainment, and flat out partying. Peg joined me for dancing at the After Hours Party, held at Ibiza, and also for all the fun at Midnight Madness. During Midnight Madness, she won the grand prize from SmugMug for being able to roll an Oreo cookie from her forehead into her mouth without using her hands! The prize was one year of SmugMug Pro hosting and a custom site. What great timing since our photo site (photos.bgcustoms.biz) is up for renewal in April. Don’t ever miss Midnight Madness if you can help it.

Being an election year in DC, the NAPP folks decided to theme everything as an election debate. Probably not one of their better ideas. The first part of the opening ceremony kind of tanked before Adobe took over. NAPP did however draw in record crowds for an east coast event so maybe they will be back. The Expo could have been a little larger. Even so, there were a number of photo companies offering decent discounts. I was happy with my deals I received from Midwest Photo Exchange. Wescott had a neat setup once again. They brought in models into their booth and allowed everyone to photograph them using their Wescott lights. The majority of the instructors were good to great with my favorites being Calvin Hollywood and Joe McNally.

I returned tired but smiling. The event was as much inspirational as it was educational. I have plenty of things I want to try in the future because of this convention. It was well worth every penny spent. If you have ever thought about attending you really should go.

I need to make it to Photoshop World in Vegas one of these years.

Photographing Spring Flowers at Brookside Gardens

The unusually warm weather has flowers popping out all over the place early this year. A nice Saturday compelled us to go to one of the Washington DC areas best places to photograph flowers, Brookside Gardens. This little park is located at 1800 Glenallan Avenue in Wheaton, MD and has a variety of flowers and events throughout the year.

As the early morning fog burned off, we strolled around the 50-acres of gardens. The Tea House, at the Gude Garden, always makes for a good photographing opportunity.

The daffodils were just starting to fade and only a few early tulips had popped through the ground. The Trial Garden contains over 10,000 spring flowering bulbs of various colors and sizes. This makes it hard not to be able to capture at least a few good photographs.

The gardens have a large collection of hellebores, a shade loving flower, scattered about. This is about the only flower that grows in the wooded area around our garage so we wrote a few names down to do some shopping later. I have always been drawn to texture so the interesting bark on trees, in my opinion, makes for a great photo. But if you prefer, there are plenty of flowering trees and turtles to click away at in the gardens as well.

What’s at Coffee and Cars in Great Falls, VA?

We got up early to drive across the mountain and enjoy the Coffee and Cars Saturday morning cruise-in at Katie’s Coffee House in Great Falls, VA. Held every Saturday from 7am until 9am, this cruise-in attracts many high end vehicles and this foggy morning was no exception. The warm weather during the week packed in all the car nuts and parking was tight.

There were a half dozen or so Lamborghini models scattered about. I have always been a sucker for these sleek monsters. Too bad I could never fit into one. Peg was trying to figure out how much money was on display but quickly gave up. Too much was her answer.

A large majority of the cars present were European cars. You had your choice of Ferraris, Porsches, Mercedes, Jaguars, Aston Martins, Maseratis, and even Minis to look at this weekend.

The domestic side of the house was well represented as with Corvettes, Vipers, and Shelbys. There was even a 1999 Shelby Series 1 in the parking lot. You don’t see one of those very often.

Vintage cars were on hand for those who like them. How about looking at an Austin Healey Sprite “Bugeye”, a custom VW Bus, or maybe a vintage Jaguar?

It was still a little chilly but it didn’t stop these 1934 MG and Alfa-Romeo from dropping their tops.

I got all giggly when I saw this 1929 Bentley drive in. Yes, it was driven in!  I really love Coffee and Cars since it never fails to put a smile on my face.

Here is probably a car you have never seen before.  How about a Fisker? Yup, there is all kinds of cool stuff showing up at Coffee and Cars!

When you are crawling around on the ground taking photos, you never know who might take an interest in you.

So, get out of bed and go experience Coffee and Cars for yourself. You won’t regret it!