One of the things I’ve been working on the last couple of months is the outline for an extended series that I’ve given the working title Getting Geeky with Lightroom.
I have two main goals for this series. First, I believe that to become as good a photographer as you can be, you need to master your tools and understand how to use them to accomplish your goals. Second, I want you to waste as little of your time as possible working on image post production so you can spend more time making new images.
Power and Efficiency. Together, they can let you get the most out of your images in the least amount of time. This guide is designed to instruct you in how I have set up and use my Lightroom environment to help you improve your own environment and workflow.
The last couple of months have been crazy, with the holidays and then the Morro Bay trip. There’s nothing quite like “the holidays are done, now I can relax… my god, I’m taking that trip in a week and the trees aren’t pruned!” to suck up your free time. Now I’m home for a while, other than some day tripping, and I can put a bit more focus on writing again.
Looking forward into 2014
I’ve got two trips being planned right now.
- Spring in Yellowstone: I’m going to be taking a week or so and haul my butt out to Yellowstone (and the Tetons) for some significant photography. The timing of the trip isn’t final (depends, among other things, on when the park is plowed and open) but I’m leaning towards the week before Memorial day.
- Fall in the Eastern Sierra: The other trip we’ve started planning is one Laurie and I have talked about for a few years. In October we’ll be heading to Lee Vining for Michael Frye’s Fall Foliage workshop. We’re hoping to extend the trip a few days so we can take in Bodie and do some other exploring out there. Other than this, I expect to be staying close to home base most of the year.
I do hope to get to Yosemite for a couple of days during Dogwood season, but I don’t know if my schedule will allow.
Here on the blog, I’ve been trying to decide what I should focus on and what projects I can start to push my photography forward into 2014. I’m currently looking to start up a couple of things:
- Twice a month, I am going to start publishing a before&after tutorial on an image, showing how it went from the RAW image to the final product. I think these kinds of tutorials can be useful for others because it shows off techniques they can adopt, but I find this kind of work useful myself because the feedback I get when I do it helps me learn new things and push my own work forward.
- I’ve also decided that I need to start being more active in publishing and promoting my work. The last few years I’ve focused mostly on what it takes to create good images. Now I need to spend more time and resources helping others become aware of them, and learn how to handle the outreach and publicity aspect better. One way I’m going to do this is that once a quarter I’m going to publish a portfolio of work, to try to put some structure and context around the images. Another is that I plan to start submitting images to some contests, if only to get me thinking in terms of getting comfortable with the selection and submission process.
There are a couple of other things sucking at my time right now. I’m continuing to shoot out in the refuges when I can, and exploring how I want to write up and publish my work involving them.
The Drought
One big aspect of maintaining the refuges is water, and if you’ve been paying attention to the news at all, you realize California is in a major drought — literally the worst in a couple of hundred years. I’ve found myself fascinated by and drawn into the water problems and the politics of the water policies of the regions and trying to understand the implications of the drought and how it’s going to affect everything in the state. It’s an exceptionally complicated and difficult topic but I’m finding it all fascinating.
My basic reaction is that we’re screwed and it’s going to be close to impossible to deal with this without major disruptions, and the decisions are going to be tough to make well. We’re already seeing ranchers cutting cattle herds as the pastures turn into dirt. There are estimates that hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland won’t be planted next year. That’s going to impact many people — and our crop prices. They’ve already decided to pull back on the San Joaquin River restoration project for at least the next year, which is sad (but I can’t argue the decision); one thing I’ve noted is that some of the refuges I’ve been shooting have only flooded parts of the refuge — Merced seems to be about 70% flooded, for instance. I wonder how bad that will be next winter if this continues.
This is a very complicated without easy decisions, so I’m still trying to get my head around it. If you want to start digging in behind the headlines and the political posturing, a good place to start is Maven’s Notebook (also on Twitter). It has some really good, detailed information on the delta water project (aka “Peripheral Canal II”), which is a massive water moving mega project currently being argued over here in the state. You might also want to follow Peter Gleick on twitter.
This is going to be a huge thing here in California. It’s going to affect all of us, but I’m especially worried about the impact to the nature areas and its inhabitants. it’s safe to assume you’re going to hear more about this from me over time, but right now, I’m still trying to understand it well enough to talk about it.