As the weather turns cold and we’re still isolated due to COVID-19, I’ve been relaxing by working my way back through my Lightroom catalog. Taking a fresh eye at an older image with a clean edit, metadata update and then posted has been a great exercise in curating my work. This image had been sharing originally to Instagram back in November 2018 and auto-posted to this blog, but not Flickr.
The photo was originally in 35mm landscape orientation shot on my Leica R6.2, most likely on Ilford film (though I’m too lazy to dig out the negatives for confirmation). I had cropped it to 4×5 vertical for Instagram. Seeing it now there’s just so much thrown away by the narrow format even though it fits the Instagram mobile view better. In this version I’ve moved to a 1×1 square which gives the leaf more room to angle up towards to the corner of the frame. It feels better to me now, less constrained.
The more I look at my own images, as well as those of other photographers in books and online, I even more opportunity to be creative or to more quickly discard those that don’t meet my latest vision. Edits aren’t forever. One of the great things about using tools such as Lightroom is the ability to reset an image to its original state then start all over again.
stevebanfield.blog 
I think next summer I will take a course in Lightroom and Photoshop.
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There are lots of tutorials on YT, CreativeLive and elsewhere. Also many of the photography instruction centers that offered hands on courses are now doing remote learning, so it’s even easier to find a great course. I took a Photoshop course a couple of years ago but don’t use it too much. Most of the limited adjustments I do happen in Lightroom. I also use Lightroom to manage my photo catalog.
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I have talked to people who prefer Lightroom and others photoshop. I just finished my second course online. The next one I want to take covers both photoshop and Lightroom. Work is busy though so it may have to wait until May or June. The online experience was good. All reading material was online. Tests were online. After I submitted projects an instructor would critique it through an audio file. Hearing the comments was very helpful.
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