The cover of the December 2010 issue of PDN which features an image by Todd Spoth.

Back in October, I was browsing through my issue of PDN (Photo District News) magazine and came across an ad that was promoting one of their contests. I have never really paid much attention to contests, the few that I have entered in the past have been in the photojournalism realm and most of the contests that are advertised in PDN are more on the commercial side. This one was interesting though. The Ultimate Music Moment photo contest sponsored by Billboard Magazine sounded right up my alley.

I have been involved in the music scene in some way ever since high school, whether that meant playing in bands, touring with bands, reviewing or photographing live music or just being a passionate lover of all things musical.

The Billboard/PDN Ultimate Music Moment photo contest consisted of professional and amateur divisions, and had three categories; artist portraits, performances, and crowd. Not only did the contest appeal to my interests, but it sounded familiar. I pondered for a few moments before it hit me. Just a few weeks prior I was working with former Life Magazine photographer, Joe McNally here in Houston. During a break, his first assistant, Drew Gurian, and I got to talking about music, as we are both musicians and love photographing live music, and he had told me that he was a winner of this same contest the year prior.

I knew it sounded familiar!

Weeks passed and the deadline for entry loomed. During mid-October I found myself on a trip to Europe. It was during that trip that friend and colleague Eric Kayne reminded me that the deadline for entry was that same night. Eric was eager to enter his own images of indie band, Arcade Fire, and here I was, in Europe, about to miss the deadline.

I was away from my image archive and on the road with my Mac Book Pro. Thankfully I was able to find high-resolution versions of the images I wanted to enter in my Photoshelter online archive. Phew. I went to the contest’s website, entered my 2 images (seen below), begrudgingly paid my entry fee and hit submit.

"Warped Tour Hands" by Todd Spoth, winner in the "crowd" category of the 2010 Billboard Ultimate Music Moment photo contest.

Image of The Flaming Lips at Summerfest 2010 in Houston, Texas taken by Todd Spoth.

After a few more weeks had passed, I had all but forgotten about the entered images, until I received an email from an editor at PDN magazine informing me that my image was a finalist and that I needed to submit a higher resolution version of the image that made the cut. I excitedly submitted the image and eagerly waited for the December/January issue of PDN, where the winner’s gallery for the contest would be published.

About a week or two ago, I finally received my copy of that issue, opened it up, and was excited to see one of my submitted images, an image I captured at a local Warped Tour music festival, published in the winner’s gallery. My black and white image of the hands of a crowd of Warped Tour spectators has always been a favorite of mine and now it had won in the crowd category of this contest.

Each winning photo was accompanied by a short blurb that the photographer wrote about his or her particular image, detailing how the image was captured and although I too submitted details for my image, it seems they pulled the generic caption information from the file’s IPTC data and printed that. Regardless, my image is there, and my name is with it, and that’s all that matters.

Maybe now I’ll actually get around to updating my website with more live music images.

Below are the scans of the title page of the contest’s winner’s gallery section in the December/January issue of PDN, as well as the page where my image is featured. They are scans so apologizes for the ghosting as PDN’s pages are pretty thin.

Please let me know what you think!

The title page for the Ultimate Music Moment photo contest winner's gallery.

The Ultimate Music Moment photo contest winner's gallery page featuring a photo by Todd Spoth.

The cover of the Photoshop User magazine Jan/Feb 2011 issue featuring an image by Todd Spoth.

About a month and a half ago I got an email from Mike Mackenzie, Associate Publisher of Photoshop User and Layers magazines, letting me know that they wanted me to be featured in Photoshop User magazine. I was thrilled to be featured in a magazine that I receive and read every month, especially after getting a personal tour of the NAPP/Kelby group headquarters just a few months ago. (see that post here)

I have been a NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) member for years now and have enjoyed the benefits greatly. The guys over @ NAPP work hard at creating the most thorough training content for creative professionals using Adobe software. If you need to know how to do something in Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Bridge, et al, they know how to get it done. Like many of the professional organizations I belong to, I probably only use a fraction of the member benefits, but my favorite is the free 3-day shipping on every order from B&H photo. If you’re anything like me, you are frequently placing orders for this or that with B&H (one of the largest and best photo/video/audio retailers in the country). Being a NAPP member not only gives you complimentary shipping on every order, but upgrades it to 3-day rather than UPS ground. This benefit alone has made my membership worthwhile. Check out the NAPP website at http://photoshopuser.com.

I have been an Adobe Lightroom user since its beta release in 2006. Back then I was trying out Apple’s counterpart, Aperture, as well as Lightroom and ultimately decided on Lightroom. It was just a lot easier to use. The most recent release, Lightroom 3, has made my life a whole lot easier. The things you can do with the software is amazing.

Mike interviewed me about my usage of Lightroom and some of my basic theories concerning my approach to photography. The resulting interview, bio, and image gallery can be seen in a multi-page feature in the January/February issue of Photoshop User magazine. The issue should arrive to NAPP members this week, and hitting the shelves around January 4th according to the NAPP team. I always see the magazine front and center at places like Barnes & Noble, Borders and other places magazines are sold, so pick one up if you can! To read the actual bio and interview text simply click on the image of the spread below or click here.

The cover to the special Lightroom section featuring images by Todd Spoth.

Photoshop User magazine has a special Lightroom section, which is where my feature can be found. A selection of my images are on the Lightroom section’s title page (seen above) and the actual feature is comprised of a two page spread which includes a short bio, the short interview, another batch of images, as well as an additional page featuring a few more images (seen below) The actual design of the spread is meant to look like the layout of Lightroom itself, complete with basic camera settings for each of the highlighted images.

The main, two-page spread featuring a bio, interview and photos by Todd Spoth.

An additional page featuring more photos by Todd Spoth.

In addition to being featured in the issue, I was surprised when just a few days ago, when I received my own physical copy in the mail, that they had chosen one of my images for the cover as well. The interesting part is that the cover image was actually not taken with one of my expensive SLR bodies, but my point-and-shoot Canon G9, which has since been sold. Oh the irony! Regardless of the tools that captured the moment, I think the image looks great.

I initially sent Mike and the guys over at NAPP about 30 or so images to choose from, so the final selection of images was ultimately left up to their team. Below is a short digest of the images they chose for the issue and links to their respective blog posts. There were several other, smaller, images the guys chose to fill out the thumbnail bar towards the bottom of each page, but the main images are all detailed below.

COVER

1. Portrait of Libby Johnston taken with the Canon G9. See “THE RED CURTAIN”.

LIGHTROOM TITLE PAGE

1. Portrait of Kingwood High School swimmer, Matt Barber. See “FUTURE OLYMPIAN?”.

2. Portrait of MLB pitching prospect, Jameson Taillon. See “JAMESON TAILLON”.

3. “Summer Solstice” image created to illustrate the hot Houston Summers. (no blog)

MAIN SPREAD

1. Portrait of my buddy Rob, who is a teacher. (no blog)

2. Matt Barber again. (see above)

3. “Favela Boys” from my 2008/2009 essay on Rio de Janeiro. See “BRAZIL”.

4. Portrait of “The Dog Whisperer”, Cesar Millan. See “THE DOG WHISPERER”.

ADDITIONAL PAGE

1. Portrait of Shawn Welling, filmmaker, dancer, choreographer and painter. See “MORE PORTRAITS”.

2. Portrait from the deserts of Qatar. See “DESTINATION: QATAR”.

3. Jameson Taillon again. (see above)

4. Portrait of friend and fellow photographer, Adrienne Byard. See “ADRIENNE & ELIZABETH”.

The images of the spread above were from PDF’s, I did manage to scan a few more of the pages of the issue, where my images are shown. Since the images below are direct scans as opposed to the PDF’s seen above, I used Photoshop to clean the scans up and make them look presentable for the blog! Go Photoshop! Ha.

Table of contents page featuring photos from Todd Spoth.

About page featuring photos from Todd Spoth.

Masthead page where I am listed as a contributing writer.

One thousand apologies for the lack of updates. It’s very rare that I go a whole month without blogging. I hate these entries because so much has happened that it’s hard to remember everything to add into just one blog, but since updating my blog is on my to-do list, I’ll try.

I moved back home to Houston this past Monday. It was a tough 24 hour drive with a quick nap at a hotel in Roanoke, VA. The last month or so at Patuxent were busy busy. Not only was I busy with assignments for the paper, other things were keeping me busy as well. Knowingly moving back to Houston, I put a lot on my plate as far as getting things in order to jump back into the freelance market in Houston, such as self-promotion, contacting editors and such. I got some neat new business cards made as well as a batch of 4×6 promo cards. A few of my coworkers and I drove down to Atlanta and attended the Atlanta Photojournalism Conference. I met a lot of awesome people and had a grand time.

Right before leaving for Atlanta I received my new Canon 5D mark II body. I absolutely love it so far. I’ve done a ton of short mess around clips, shot a few assignments with it and shot a short little mockumentary project with The Firm in Baltimore. I’m still in the editing process of that piece so stay tuned. I’m going to miss all my newly found friends in Baltimore.

I am loving it so far being back home. It’s something about moving back home during the holiday season that makes it extra special. Tuesday was my birthday and about 12 friends and I went to the Rockets game and out for late night food. I am visiting all of my favorite local food joints and even doing a few assignments already for the Chronicle. In fact a shot from an assignment yesterday (see above inset image) ran A-1 main art today!

I always enjoyed my old (current until today) business card. It was nice and clean and matched my older web portfolio nicely. It was glossy on both sides and displayed a nice mix of color images in a neat little design on the front with one image and my info on the back. Earlier this year I upgraded my web portfolio and since it was completely redesigned, I wanted, then, to create a new business card to accompany the change. I had a partial design that I had created at the inception of the new web design, but never followed through. Recently a few of my co-workers and I were out to dinner and while showing me a few of their new cards they inspired me to finish my new card. So I did! I wanted a new, more simple design with one bold image on the front and the info on the back. I just picked up the new cards today and I love them. Below is an image that shows the new design.

In other news, my mom called me earlier to tell me she was filming a movie all day. My parents live in Rio de Janiero, Brasil. She occasionally tells me about some ridiculous event going on there, and when she mentioned to me yesterday that she was asked to be an extra in a movie, I figured she would gather in a crowd of thousands and be an ant on the screen, but when she updated me just now, I found out that the situation was a bit different. Apparently the film is a mockumentary about documentaries made in Rio that show the favelas in a harsh light. The producers and director wanted to show that the people of the favelas are for the most part a friendly and happy people. The film features actor Bill Pullman and Fisher Stevens (of Short Circuit and LOST fame) While I am unclear on a lot of the details, she did tell me she was riding in a jeep and sitting across from both actors for a better part of the day filming in Rio’s largest favela, Rochina, which I had a chance to visit during my trip earlier this year.

PUBLICATION OR LOCATION: print mailers/flyers for The Lodge at Bayou Bend restaurant in Houston, Texas.
PUBLICATION DATE: Spring 2007
LINK: N/A
NOTES: Some of my food photography for the upscale restaurant, The Lodge at Bayou Bend (formerly the Rainbow Lodge, now Landry’s owned Brenner’s on the Bayou) was featured on these print mailers to promote the restaurant.