Archive for the ‘Behind the scenes’ Category

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Jen Kramer, CMS content, and fake hamburgers

Published by Megan O. Read | Monday, November 9th, 2009

Jen Kramer is awesome. She is the queen of Joomla!, her first book is rapidly approaching completion, she plays a mean flute, and she’s in town recording a couple of really cool CMS courses for lynda.com (CMS Website Strategy and Planning, and Preparing CMS Web Graphics and Layouts Using Open Source). Hooray for more Jen Kramer content! We took her to lunch at a local vegan/raw restaurant on Friday, because we wanted to give her the “Southern California Experience”—and because we think it’s yummy. Looking forward to your next visit out here, Jen!

Jen

Jen and her organic and vegan "hamburger," lynda.com Producer Samara Iodice, Author Relations Manager Megan, and the fantastic Jen Kramer at a Mary's Secret Garden in Ventura, CA.

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Trainers, Upcoming titles | 3 Comments »

Photoshop Live and The InDesign Conference Wrap-up

Published by Megan O. Read | Friday, November 6th, 2009

This week, eight lynda.com authors and other talented industry speakers gathered in Washington DC for the MOGO Media conferences Photoshop Live (November 2nd & 3rd) and The InDesign Conference (November 4th & 6th).

Mordy Golding, Jan Kabili, Lesa Snider, Ted LoCascio, Michael Ninness, Derrick Story, Anne-Marie Concepcion, and Michael Murphy were all in fine form teaching an eager audience at the U.S. Naval Heritage Center, located just off the Mall in downtown DC. If you were in attendance, you know this was an excellent opportunity to get to sit and listen to some inspiring instruction, go on an evening Photo Walk with Derrick Story, and eat pizza while Michael Ninness gave an awesome three and a half hour (by demand!) session on InDesign. If you missed this show, be sure to check out other MOGO conferences and seminars.

Photoshop Live

Left column: Photoshop Live poster, Michael Ninness. Middle column: Mordy Golding, Derrick Story, Jan Kabili, Anne-Marie Concepcion, Michael Murphy, Right column: Washington Monument, White House, Author Dinner featuring Lesa Snider, Jay Nelson, Garrick Chow, Jan Kabili, Derrick Story, Ed and Megan Read, Michael Ninness, and Mordy Golding.

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Trainers | No Comments »

Happy Halloween from all of us at lynda.com!

Published by Crystal | Saturday, October 31st, 2009

Halloween was just full of surprises and creative costumes this year at lynda.com! Here are just a few of our many valued employees, incognito:

happy halloween from everyone at lynda.com!

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Posted in Behind the scenes | 1 Comment »

Authors in the house! A week full of training at lynda.com

Published by Megan O. Read | Friday, October 30th, 2009

This week at lynda.com was wall-to-wall authors! In the booths we had authors recording training on Photoshop, Cinema 4D, Mac OSX Server, audio apps, Dreamweaver, and digital photography. Quite a mix! It’s a great group with some familiar faces, and talented new faces as well. To unwind from recording, and celebrate these inspiring authors, all went out on Wednesday night with Ms. Lynda.

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From left to right: author G.W. Childs, acquisitions manager Joe Randeen, author James Williamson, author relations manager (your's truly) Megan Read, producer Tom Mueller and wife Sally, author Sean Colins, producers Nick Brazzi, Kirk Werner, Max Smith, Senior Director of Education and Content Planning Laurie Burruss, author Ian Robinson, author Chris Orwig, co-owner Lynda Weinman, and author Deke McClelland.

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Trainers | 1 Comment »

Meet the InDesigner: Michael Murphy brings his expertise to lynda.com

Published by Megan O. Read | Friday, October 16th, 2009
MichaelMurphy

Author Michael Murphy with his new baby. From Michael's podcast, The InDesigner, episode 52, available through iTunes.

We are SO pleased to welcome Michael Murphy to our lynda.com recording booths this week!

Michael has been a designer and art director for over 20 years, maintains The InDesigner blog, and is the man behind The InDesigner videocast available on iTunes (voted one of .net magazine’s Top 40 Tech Podcasts). He’s also an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign, an author and a frequent speaker and instructor. Between all that, and recently welcoming his first baby into the world, we managed to get some of his time for a new InDesign GREP course that we think just might change the way you look at InDesign.

Michael is just wrapping up the GREP course, so it should be ready for your hot little hands in a few months time. In the meantime, check out Michael’s fantastic videocast for really great content, in a really enjoyable format. Thanks, Michael!

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Upcoming titles | 6 Comments »

New Photo Assignment series teaches technique and urges collaboration

Published by Megan O. Read | Thursday, October 8th, 2009
lynda.com producer Samara Iodice with instructor/photographer Derrick Story.

lynda.com producer Samara Iodice with instructor/photographer Derrick Story.

As Jim wrote yesterday, lynda.com has plans for a number of new photography related courses — and just by chance, we’ve just released the first course in a new series for aspiring photographers this week. Photo Assignment: Natural Light Portraits with author and photographer Derrick Story is a really cool new lynda.com course that shows us valuable techniques for shooting portraits in natural (i.e. unpredictable and sometimes unflattering) lighting. These tips are sure to bring your outdoor portrait photography to the next level.

But wait, there’s more…

Derrick has created a Flickr group dedicated to showcasing lynda.com members’ natural light portraits, too. So after you watch the course and pick up some new tips, grab your kid sister, neighbor, or better half, and start snapping shots. Then upload your pix to the public Natural Light Portrait Photo Assignment Flickr group for feedback and to see the photos other members have shot and uploaded.

Derrick shows you how to join the Flickr group within this course, but if you would like more training on Flickr, check out Derrick’s other lynda.com course entirely devoted to the photo-sharing website, Flickr Essential Training.

I’ll be uploading my own photos to Derrick’s Flickr group soon and hope you will join me.

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Photography, Published Courses | 1 Comment »

Hello from the new Content Manager for Photography: Jim Heid

Published by Jim Heid | Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
Meet Jim Heid, lynda.com's Content Manager for Photography

Meet Jim Heid, lynda.com's Content Manager for Photography

Smile, everybody! I’m Jim Heid, the new Content Manager for photography here at lynda.com.

Some of you may recognize my name from the pages of Macworld magazine, where I’ve been writing since the dawn of time. Or you might know me from my The Macintosh iLife series of books on Apple’s iLife suite. A handful of you might even be familiar with my photos on Flickr.

At lynda.com, my job is to help plan our photography-related courses. And we’ll be offering a lot more in the future. Of course, you’ll see new courses on Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, and other essential digital imaging tools. But you’ll also see courses on photographic technique: Lighting, composition, lenses, and more.

For anyone who loves photography, this is a great time to be alive. Cameras, lenses, and imaging software have never been better. But at least as important, the Internet has given each of us a global audience, a way to inspire and be inspired. At lynda.com, we’ll be taking advantage of this revolution in imaging, too.

You’ll be hearing from me frequently here on the lynda.com blog. In the meantime, I’d love your comments containing suggestions on the types of photography courses you’d like to see.

In 1944, Popular Photography magazine ran an article containing predictions for the future of photography. Among them:

  • “It is possible to perfect the camera to the point where it will become an automatic instrument which will focus, expose, and process the film by the mere push of a button.”
  • “I should like to see [the camera] develop until it takes its place with the pencil and the typewriter as an instrument of our everyday language.”
  • “Networks will make it possible for everyone in the world to see pictures of news events at the same time.”

Welcome to the future.

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Photography | 8 Comments »

Lights, camera, live action: Dane Howard on the set of his new lynda.com course

Published by Megan O. Read | Friday, September 4th, 2009
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A panoramic view of the live-action set.

Dane Howard has been keeping our live-action set hopping this week while he records a new training course stressing the important techniques (angles, lighting, and so on) of product photography for eCommerce.

These days everyone seems to buy and sell on ebay, make hand-made goodies for Etsy, or are just using their own personal websites and blogs to share images of things they have cooked/made/found/purchased. This new course from Dane will not only inspire, it will teach how to improve the quality and visual appeal of product shots. Our live-action set is filled with adorable crafts and goodies that Dane has been shooting this week, and we can’t WAIT for you to see the final training course as he brings these items to life!

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Dane sneaks a picture of himself on the monitor.

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Trainers, Upcoming titles | 1 Comment »

lynda.com author news: dinners, unicycles, Photoshop, InDesign, Twitter, Facebook, and more

Published by Megan O. Read | Friday, August 14th, 2009
dinnershots

Top group dinner shot, left to right: Some of the lynda.com production team, Andy Ta, Roon Tamuli, Nick Brazzi, Samara Iodice, Max Smith, and Andrew Geibel. Then it's Ian Robinson (author), Megan Read (me), Nigel French (author), and Nigel's friend. Center unicycle shots: the first and second photos are the multitalented author Ian Robinson, third photo is our own Nick Brazzi. Bottom group shot, left to right: Max, Nick, Deke McClelland (author), me, Robbie Carman (author).

Over the last two weeks, we’ve had authors from all over the place in our recording booths. Ian Robinson from Virginia was in-house recording some eye-catching new Motion 4 training, Nigel French was here all the way from the UK recording an interesting new InDesign typography course, and Michael Ninness was here from Seattle recording the must-see InDesign Power Shortcuts.

This week is another busy one at lynda.com! We’ve got Robbie Carman also from Virginia recording some brand spankin’ new Color 1.5 training, Anne-Marie Concepción in from Illinois recording a cool new course about marketing your business with Twitter and Facebook, and of course, Deke McClelland from Colorado recording handfuls of must-see Photoshop training.

Our authors are all hard-working professionals, but occasionally, they get to let their hair down at a nice dinner with their lynda-peeps, or let off some steam with a fun Friday lunch playing on unicycles in the parking lot. Yes, there are actually quite a few unicyclers here at lynda.com!

Enjoy the pix, and as always, the training!

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Trainers | 2 Comments »

lynda.com author news: Final Cut training, top-secret series, and more

Published by Megan O. Read | Friday, July 31st, 2009
trainers

Top: Abba Shapiro and producer Max Smith in a recording booth. Bottom left: How we get our trainers activated. Bottom right: Derrick Story hard at work on his new series.

This week at lynda.com, Apple-Certified trainer and author Abba Shapiro is in town recording some brand spankin’ new Final Cut training – his first course for lynda.com. The Digital Story’s very own Derrick Story is recording a new top-secret lynda.com training series! Stay tuned for more!

And in the Creative Inspirations author world, you might enjoy reading the Big Spaceship blogs. First, their Think blog, the team’s “perspective on ideas that move people.” The Big Spaceship Labs blog is “a space devoted to experimenting with design and technology.”

Another luminary in our Creative Inspirations series, Margo Chase, will be featured in the AIGA Los Angeles Fellows Speaker Series to talk about the business of design. Visit the AIGA Los Angeles web site for registration information for this event on August 27.

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