Lightroom Develop Module Part 1 "Global Effects"

November 13, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Portrait Workshop Lightroom Develop Module is where all the work on editing photo's in Lightroom is done. I have decided to do the develop module in two parts the first part is global adjustments and part 2 will be selective adjustments. Global adjustments are like white balance, exposure, contrast ect... things that will change the whole photograph not just one part of it.

Global corrections is what Lightroom does best in my opinion. If you want to make a lot of specialized adjustments Lightroom can do some but Photoshop is the place to be. But for general global adjustments Lightroom is great. If your a Photoshop person than the develop module is just the same as the camera raw plugin in Photoshop. Looks different but is basically the same thing.

Adjustments in the Develop Module are made with sliders. You can click and drag the sliders to make the adjustments. This is about as easy as it gets. Not a lot of thinking just looking and sliding. If you don't like what you see you can reset and start all over all without damaging your original image. Non destructive editing!

Lightroom Develop Module Part 1 Video Link: https://youtu.be/e_Gg__d4UcQ

Under Pier

Fall Colors Workshop

November 06, 2015 • 1 Comment

I attended my photography's club 2nd annual Fall Colors workshop in the mountains of North Carolina. Last year 8 of us went on this workshop and rented a cabin for 5 days 4 nights and we had a ball traveling around the mountains taking in the fall colors and working on our technique of photographing waterfalls and wildlife. The trip last year was so go that this year we went again but 12 of us went and we rented 2 cabins. Again we had our daily events set up for us by our club officers and we had a good mix of wildlife photography and landscape photography with the fall colors in full bloom. Photography Technique's were shared by the more advanced photographers to the newer photographers and equipment was shared by all. This is a very unique experience for most and we all learned a lot and got great photo's. But that wasn't the best part of the trip.

The fellowship of like minded people (Photo Nuts) and being able to talk about our craft and our perspective on how we see the world was the best part to me. We had many people from different walks of life different ages,backgrounds,ect... But we all had one thing in common. The love of photography and being out in nature with each other. We were like little kids out playing in the school yard with enthusiasm and we were as excited as we could be. Leading up to the workshop people started getting

Elk ElkMax Stansell Photography excited and group text started with what to bring and going off on all sorts of tangents. After we arrived the excitement level didn't slow down any and we were excited on what we were doing and looking forward to the next days adventure. We ate together photographed together stayed together in the cabin and traveled together yet our photographs were very different because we all see the world in different ways. We became very close as a group and nicknames started to be given. Some of us had nicknames from the trip last year that carried over to this year and new members got nicknames. Usually for things that have gone wrong. Like "Splash" for falling in the water or "Crash" for someone who fell down. But it was all in good fun. Decisions that had to be made were discussed with members of the group and final decisions were made by our officers. We all picked fun of each other but never seemed to get on anyone's nerves. We had no personality conflicts among members. Fun was had by all. This was our shooting itinerary.

Day 1- Travel to Cabin and Soco Falls in Maggie Vally

Day 2- Cades Cove Tn. and Mingus Mill

Day 3- Looking Glass Falls , High Falls, Triple Falls, Cabin

Day 4- Elk at Cataloochee NC and Shoal Mill Falls at Living Waters

Day 5- Rainy day and ride back home

Fall RapidsMax Stansell Photography

Adobe Lightroom "Map Module"

October 30, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Foot Bridge What is the Map Module? The Map Module in Lightroom lets you see where your photo's were taken in Google Maps. It is also a place where you can put the GPS coordinates on your photos.(Geotag) This can be a great tool for you to see where you take the most photo's at and if your a landscape photographer like me and you've hiked in many miles and you don't really have a address to put your location down you can geotag these photo's and go back to the exact same place and take the photo again. Maybe you've found a scene that you want to take all 4 seasons at you would be able to go back to the same place and do that.

How do I geotag my photographs? Well there are many ways to do it. Once your in the map module you could simply click, drag and drop your photo onto the google map where you took the photo. If your like me you don't always know the exact location on a map you could use a GPS device or your cell phone with the correct app to create GPX tracks. Then you could import the track (which is like a digital breadcrumb trail) and then you could auto tag your photo's and they will appear on the google map with all the right coordinates on them. You do have to be careful and make sure your camera and your GPS device or phone are at the same time or they might not sync into the correct spot on the map.

Here is a quick video on how to use the Map Module in Lightroom : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH6sg5Yzhwg

Keipart Prong Crossing Charles Bunion View 3

Adobe Lightroom "Library Module"

October 23, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Organizing, Rating, Culling, Exporting, Social media, Collections, Key wording. These are all things that Adobe Lightroom Library Module can do for you. This module is where all of your photo's live. We may take them to other modules to do things but they live here in the Library.

The organizational part of Lightroom is what makes it Lightroom. Being able to organize the way you want within Lightroom makes it very versatile. Being able to rate your photo's makes it easer to cull your photos down from a large number to a manageable one quickly and helps you get the best product out to the world fast. Also being able to locate photo's through Key wording is a very valuable tool. If Im looking for a photo of puppies I can just type in puppies and all the photo's that have that key word will appear.

Rating and Culling is a important process cutting down photo's from the large numbers that we shoot and narrowing them down to the best of the bunch is a big process. Lightroom can help with a numbering system or a color system. Lightroom make it easy just by clicking.

Social media is a important part of any photographer now a days. Its easy to get your photo's onto social media like Facebook, Flicker or 500px. Just Drag and drop and you can send your photo's there.

Now here's a video on the Library Module : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoIfeUq5BIg

Keep Shooting!

Adobe Lightroom "Importing Photo's"

October 16, 2015 • 1 Comment

Cypress Tree Moon This is the first in a series of tutorials on Adobe Lightroom. While I was at a local Photography Club meeting I overheard some newer members talking about LR (Lightroom) and how they just got it and wanted to learn how to use it. I thought to myself this would be a good time to make tutorials on how to use LR for beginners. I am by no means a expert on the subject of LR and all of the ins and outs but I have been using it for years and I can teach a beginning course on the basics.

So lets start. Adobe Lightroom (LR) is a organizational program that organizes, rates, shares and edits your photographs. You can use it to send photo's to social media like Facebook, Flicker or 500px. You can export photo's to a JPEG format or RAW formats after all of your editing is done. You can create slideshows and time-lapse photography with LR. You can Geotag photo's and find them on a map with LR. Lightroom is a powerful tool. But before you can do all of that you must get your photo's into Lightroom to do this we use the Import function .

When the import window pops up you can tell LR where to get your photo's from ,where to send them ,make a backup copy, apply some preprocessing ,add keywords and metadata. All with a click of a button. You can also start the culling process here and get rid of the really bad photo's before they get on your computer.