This is my 3rd year doing the competition and every year I walk away blown away by the work I see. This year I placed 3rd in the commercial advertising category for the work at USC Hospital. Thanks to Kate Heller-Thomas over at Malone & Company for her stellar post work. 2 of my other images received Accolades of Excellence Awards. The really exciting thing is this year WPPI opened up the album fusion category, which allows for moving image or slideshows with music. My piece of my son Avery’s birth won first place! Props to Jaime O’Bradovich with helping on the edit.

I’m honored to be included with so many talented photographers.

Digital Flip Book | Avery from Geoff Johnson on Vimeo.

Las Vegas Sunset from Geoff Johnson on Vimeo.

Change is good so stay tuned…

My overall score with other work placed me at 2nd for the state of Nebraska. You can see my entries in the gallery.

A few thank yous-
Kameron Bayne and Sarah Pfeiffer for pushing me to enter.
Kate Heller for all the magic post work.
Matt Larson for driving to UPS because I sent my prints to the wrong address.
Terry Winslow for connecting with Matt to get my prints in time for the deadline.

My 1st stop, was the Apple Store. I explained everything that was up and felt good they would get it fixed. The downside I would be without it for 5 days. I ended up getting my computer back in about 3 and find out it’s not fixed.

Apple sends me to a local repair shop for a new logic board. I get it back from them and again not fixed. Ugh! Back on the phone with Apple to find out I need to send it back to them for repair. This time my computer is gone for a full week and of course it’s not fixed.

Finally after another hour on the phone I get elevated to “specialist”. Because of all the issues and that I bought Apple Care they offered to replace my computer with a brand new one. They originally offered me the base model, but mine was the top of the line so I pushed to get the faster model. Apple Care will only cover an equal machine only, so their claim is the base is better than what I had. Pretty gray territory if you ask me. I spent $3500 back in 2006 for the top of the line and they replaced with a $2800 base model. They did allow me to upgrade to the faster processor and hard drive for $400. I passed at the $1000 upgrade on ram as OWC has a kit for $700 that I can do myself.

I guess for $349 Apple Care is worth it, especially on laptops. However, I do wish Apple would figure out a better way to communicate repairs from 3rd party or retail stores. Most of my time was wasted dealing with them!

Well my new one arrived today and now the joy of migrating. Mike told me about a great app called SuperDuper that works better than Time Machine on restores.

From there I head to Las Vegas for the WPPI convention. My first time attending was 9 years ago and hadn’t been back since last year. It was so refreshing to see all the talent from many different types of photographers. I entered 6 images and 4 of them scored in the print competition. I entered again this year so we’ll see what happens. Below is my page from the 2008 Annual Book. After a few days in Vegas, I head to Tortola for Peter & Stephanie’s wedding.

I need to give my client Peter and Stephanie a huge thanks for letting us crash at their place! Andrew and I will be heading to the British Virgin Islands in February to shoot their wedding.