Photo by Roger Pratesi

Rick Sammon and I just wrapped up the first Digital Photo Experience Weekend in Atlanta. The 20+ attendees were treated to Rick’s presentation of photo and HDR tips Saturday morning, and (hopefully) enthralled by my Lightroom presentation on Saturday afternoon

We had beautiful models and great locations on Sunday as we modified light using reflectors, diffusers and on and off-camera flash. Stay tuned to the DPE Flickr group for the latest uploads from the weekend.

Thanks to our sponsors we had some great door prizes… we gave away gift cards from Nation’s Photo Lab and Showcase Photo & Video, two Color Checker Passports, and copies of Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro.

If you missed it, I’m sure we will do it again next year. Maybe not in August though!

I thought I’d share some of my favorite photos from my road trip out west. I used my iPhone 4′s camera a lot on the 16 day trip. I have been so impressed with the shots from the phone that I have stopped looking for a new point and shot camera.

These shots are all from my D700, and were imported and processed with Adobe Lightroom 3.

[Show as slideshow]

Please visit DphotoA.com and check out the latest news about my upcoming photography workshops.

Cheers!

Rob

Cheers!

Spring is coming, and that means it’s almost time for my photography workshop in Mal Pais, Costa Rica. There will be plenty of activities and free time to explore the beaches of Mal Pais, Santa Teresa, Montezuma and more. We will have daily photo classes and tips on Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. We will cover the tools and techniques for HDR photography as well. It will be a blast and I hope you can join us.

Complete itinerary and online registration at Edge of the World Workshops

This is a simple thing, but it had a friend of mine stumped. Have you ever been using the adjustment brush or spot removal tool and lost the cursor? You can see it over the panels and the rest of your computer screen, but not over your image? Make the brush bigger. If you make the brush too small you will not be able to see it over your image. I have only had this problem on my MacBook pro, since you can scroll with 2 fingers on the trackpad to change the brush size. With one swipe of the trackpad your cursor disappears!

Another frequent question about the tools in the tool strip is how to hide or show the ‘pins’ that show where the brush or gradient begins. Simply press the ‘H’ key to hide the pins, and again to show them. This also applies to the dust removal tool as well. Press ‘H’ to show or hide the circles where the dust was removed. To show or hide adjustment’s mask, or areas that are being affected, press the ‘O’ key. Press shift+O to change the mask to a different color. For example, if your image is mostly red, you would want to change the color of the mask so you could see the mask against the image.

Keep an eye out for more quick tips like this in my column on the DP Experience website. This new site features a great podcast with Rick Sammon and Juan Pons, and lots of info about shooting and processing your digital images. The site officially launches on December 1.

Please email me with questions or ideas for more quick tips.

On the other hand (pun intended), if you hold the camera with the lens (or bottom of the camera) resting in the palm of your left hand, you are supporting the weight with one hand and pressing the shutter release with the other hand. This way you can introduce as little vibration as possible when you press the shutter release. Oddly enough, this is similar to target shooting with a hand gun- Most of your grip should be in your support hand so you can press the trigger with your trigger finger and not pull the pistol off target.

The point is this… it is more stable to support the camera with one hand and press the shutter release with the other. More stable means sharper photos and more keepers. This is especially important if you’re using longer exposures. If someone tells you you’re holding your camera the wrong way, they aren’t making fun of you (well, most people aren’t), they are trying to help you. When you’re ready to get REALLY serious about your grip, check THIS out… Da Grip

Now go take some sharp photos!

I start my sorting by selecting the folder I want to work on in the ‘folders’ panel on the left side of the Library module. I double-click the first image to enlarge it and press shift-tab to hide the side, top and bottom panels so that my image is as large as possible. The keys I use for my first sort are ‘P’ for pick and ‘X’ for reject. Press the ‘caps lock’ to automatically advance to the next image as you pick or reject a shot. I go through the photos adding a pick flag to my favorites and a rejected flag to shots that are out of focus or otherwise beyond repair. I press command-delete (mac) to remove the rejected photos from the folder.

Now I click on my “landscapes picks” collection, which now contains all of my flagged images. This time I want to select the cream of the crop. Photos that I might show to a client or add to my portfolio. For my favorites I use 1 star. You can use 1 to 5 stars, but for me it’s either a star or not. I go through the “picks” and use the ’1′ key to add a 1-star rating to my favorite shots. Now my smart collections contain my favorite shots and I can access them easily for editing or exporting.

For complex shoots, a wedding for example, you can create collections for ‘formal’, ‘reception’ etc. You can then create smart collections that include picks and stars from a particular collection. Just add the collection’s name as one of the rules for the smart filter.

I use Lightroom’s color labels for HDR and panoramas. I give the images I shoot for HDR processing a red label, and shots for panoramas a purple label. Then I can find these images easily using the library filters, or I can create smart collections that add these photos automatically.

Next week I’ll get into more develop module ideas, and put some of these ‘star’ images to good use.