The Quest for Better

One thing that applies to my photography is that I certainly don’t feel like I’ve arrived. While I’m here giving out tips and passing out tips I’ve found, I’m certainly not ‘at the top of my game’. Every day I learn new things. I love passing these on. Whether through this Blog, or any of the other groups I’m involved with. A big part of my yearn to learn is not to teach, but the quest for better. I want to be a better, more productive photographer. While I shot a lot of landscape work, the rotten summer has seen me do a lot more people work with off camera flash and studio strobes , along with on location portrait work, not to mention a wedding last weekend. For more on learning to use off camera flash, check out Strobist. Like with Lightroom, I’ve been onboard there from the beginning, and have gone on to teach this stuff to my friends.

How does this relate to Lightroom? Well since I’ve found Lightroom to be the tool that suits my workflow (trust me, if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t use it!), I want it to be the best tool it can be. So I push, I get involved and I look for features and fixes. I’m not sure how much say I have (if any), but when one voice mixes with others it can become a shout, which gets heard. I find the Lightroom team are very responsive bunch. You’ll never guess what they want? Yep. Better Lightroom. And so they work hard to make it happen.
One example of this is the recent reversion to lower base noise with Zero noise reduction. A lot of people found it very painterly at ISO1600, myself included. As I shoot loads of concert stuff at high ISO’s I was glad to see this changed to reflect the needs of the users.

As to the quest for better, you may find me starting to post links to inspirational photographers ala George Jardine and Matt Kloskowski. Let’s face it Lightroom is about photography and doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so this is my expanding the blog a little bit post.