You bring up a very interesting question.  I have always been working
in the Microsoft world so I have always been limited to XSLT 1.0, but
this project is a PHP 5.2.0 program.  I just looked and I see that PHP
5.2.0 is using Libxslt, but I cannot tell if Libxslt supports XSLT2.
I see that it implements most of EXSLT, what ever that is, so I am
assuming that is is XSLT2 compliant.  Do you know?

If it is, can you give me a little more info on
default-xpath-namespace, I googled it and did not find any good
examples, and I am not smart enough to understand the official specs.

> I know this is a dumb question,
Not really, It's a faq,

> I tried adding xmlns="urn://www.photoparata.com/events.xsd" to the
> root element of the XSLT, but that did not work.

try adding

xmlns:p="urn://www.photoparata.com/events.xsd" to xsl:stylesheet then
use

/p:element/p:otherelement

(unprefixed names in xpath 1, are like unprefixed attribute names and refer
to no-namespace.)

If you are using xslt2 you have the new option of using unprefixed names
in xpaths and instead setting default-xpath-namespace=... on your
xsl:stylesheet.