It’s Friday night and I’ve just finished attending a 3-day Photoshop World conference in Orlando, Florida.  For those of you not familiar with Photoshop World, it’s a conference produced by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).  There are two of these conferences held each year and they are attended by over 1000 photography enthusiasts.  As someone who has only been interested in photography for the past few years, this was the first time I’ve attended one of these conferences.

I registered for this conference over 2 months ago and shortly after I paid my registration fee, I received an email letting me know about a contest that is held for all Photoshop World conference attendees, called the “Guru Awards”. Here’s how the Photoshop World website describes these awards: “The Guru Awards are a special Photoshop contest just for attendees of the Photoshop World design and photography conference, and were created to honor and recognize the design, photography, retouching, and creativity of our attendees. Since their humble beginnings in 1999, the Guru Awards have now become the most prestigious and coveted awards in the international digital imaging industry.” Sounds pretty intriguing, doesn’t it?

So, I decided to enter the contest and chose the category of “Retouching”, since what I’m primarily doing with my photos is just that.  Per the contest rules, I submitted 3 of my images.  The 3 photos I chose were ones that had very drastic before/after looks to them.  I didn’t really think about the contest any further after I finished my submissions.

Two weeks prior to the start of the conference I received an email letting me know that I had been chosen as 1 of 3 finalists for the photo I submitted titled “Big Ben Sunset”. (You can view this photo and the story that goes along with it by viewing the post I published named “Big Ben at Sunset“.)  They wanted to make sure that I was going to be attending the conference, especially the opening keynote ceremony, because if I was chosen as the winner, I’d need to walk up on stage and accept my award.  I replied that I was in fact going to be there for the opening ceremony and later received a reply back that I would be able to enter the arena prior to all other attendees so that I could get a seat up close to the stage.

Over the next couple of weeks, I wasn’t really too concerned with whether or not I would win the contest.  After all, simply being chosen as a finalist already gave me the right to update my credentials to read “Scott Kublin – 2011 Photoshop World Guru Award Finalist”.  That, in and of itself, was enough to make it so I could begin selling my photos for an overly inflated rate, right? :)

I know you’re aware of where I’m going with this, so I’ll just come out and let you know that I was chosen as the winner for the “Photo Retouching” category.  I got to go up on stage in front of over 1000 conference attendees and accept my award, which was a really nice custom-engraved glass trophy.  As I walked off stage, I was also handed gift cards to B & H Photo totaling $500, which was an especially awesome prize that I wasn’t expecting.

So, from now forward, I shall be referred to as “Scott Kublin, the 2011 Photoshop World Guru Award Winner“. All of my prints are now available to purchase online and I have tripled the price that I sell them for. (I’m just joking!)