This is the inaugural trip of the 2012 season for The Digital Photo Workshops and I’m super psyched to be a part of it! They’ve lined up a fantastic series of trips for 2012 so far, and I’ll also be attending the next workshop in Moab in March, as well as the following one in Page, AZ in May. With any luck I hope to be able to join more of the programs later this year. Here’s the full list so far, and if you are interested in attending I worked out a special deal for readers of my blog, just enter “I heard it from Lightroomers” in the Special Needs field (along with any special needs you might have) of the registration form to save $100 off the regular $1299 price (can not be combined with any other discount) and The Digital Photo Workshop folks will take good care of you.

• Death Valley Feb 23-26 (we had a blast!)
• Moab/Arches/Canyonlands April 19-22
• Page, AZ May 10-13
• Maine June 14-17 (Lupine season!)
• Jackson Hole, WY Sept 27-30
• Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Oct 4-7
• Zion National Park Oct 18-21

I’m in the process of packing up my gear for Death Valley and wanted to share some of the resources I’ve found really helpful preparing for this type of outdoor photography (my Outdoor Education major is finally paying off!). Rick Sammon, the lead instructor on the Death Valley trip shared his essential gear list for Death Valley. A few weeks back I caught a series of blog posts by John Paul Caponigro on the Art of Packing that was just jammed packed with awesome tips and lists for making sure all your bases are covered. Derrick Story has an excellent podcast and there is one episode called The 10 Essentials that I thought was perfect for this kind of trip. If you are a Kelby Training subscriber I’ll point out that Moose Peterson has a number of classes on outdoor photography, as does Bill Fortney, and Tom Bol. If you’re not a Kelby Training Subscriber, but would like to try it free for 24 hours just  drop me a line and I’ll hook you up.

ThinkTank Photo Giveaway

Speaking of packing, my friends at ThinkTank Photo loaned me an Urban Disguise 60 v2 awhile back to test drive and they’ve agreed to let me give it away to one lucky blog reader. I’m a bit of a pack horse and this bag suited me very well. I took it on a trip to NYC and was able to fit a staggering amount of photo gear, my laptop and iPad, and more than a few other things (as you can see from the photos below). I used the shoulder harness (which I’m also giving away) when I needed to walk with it for any distance, which made carrying so much weight (I think I had it up to 35 lbs on that trip) much easier than over one shoulder. This is an excellent bag for anyone needing to carry a camera body a few lenses/accessories and a laptop. Highly recommended.

So, all you need to do to be eligible for the giveaway is to leave a comment on this blog post telling me one feature missing from Lightroom 4 Beta that you really hope gets added to the final release, or the one new feature you think will have the biggest impact on your workflow. One winner will be picked at random on February 29th (in honor of leap year). I am mailing this at my own expense, so the giveaway is only open to people with a mailing address in the USA (sorry international friends!).

If you are interested in joining me in a full-on 2 Day Lightroom-only workshop then check out my Lightroom Workshops calendar for 2012. Plus there’s always room in my online classes as well. Best of luck and hope to see you at a future event!

UPDATE 02/29/12

I gave this bag one last test run on a trip to Death Valley with The Digital Photo Workshops this past weekend and boy did it come in handy. I’m really going to miss that bag. I’d better come up with something to replace it with for the April trip to Moab.

I’ve had a review copy of this book for a few months, but my schedule has been so hectic I didn’t want to write this review until I had a chance to actually read the whole book, which I finally had the pleasure of doing. I was really impressed with the choices Dan made for what to include in the book. If I had been asked to choose 100 tips that covered Lightroom, Camera Raw and Photoshop I’m not sure I would even have known where to start! Half of the tips are devoted to Lightroom (and camera raw) and the rest are aimed at Photoshop, and it is a really good crop of tips to have under your belt.

I even learned something new about Lightroom that I had never stumbled on before, Tip #8 on Folder Import, which was very cool!

Dan has a very easy to read style, gives clear instructions, and makes a nice use of screen captures (though I’m sure he would have added more if he’d been allowed). There’s a wealth of smaller tips in the margins too. I was also really pleased to see the book is in full color, because I thought these HOW-Tos books were previously all grayscale. What’s really great about this type of book is that you can pick it up and start anywhere and just focus on a few tips at a time.

I gave away my copy during my Lightroom presentation at Photoshop World and I’m sure it is already being put to good use. This is definitely a book worth checking out. There is sample content and related articles over at Peachpit too.

I spent some time walking around the expo floor at ImagingUSA this morning. Wow! It was huge. Way bigger than Photoplus and Photoshop World. It just went on forever. One of the coolest things I found was called “the Polester”, no, not a portable pole dancing kit, but rather a telescoping pole with a mount for your camera at the top.

The inventor and mastermind behind the Polester, Jim, was kind enough to let me test drive it with my LX3. Jim did say he has a DSLR model, but the original inspiration was for use with a compact digital when you need to get a shot that might otherwise be too dangerous or difficult to capture any other way. In just a couple of minutes he had my LX3 mounted on the pole and he handed it over.

You fire the shutter by pulling a string that activates a lever that pushes the button. Simple. I suppose it could work if you were able to remotely fire your camera wirelessly. I took a few shots of the expo hall in an attempt to make a polester-pano. Results below (click for larger). No, you can’t frame the shot, but I could see that it fired each time and then just slightly rotated the pole for the next.

You can check out a video of the Polester in action over at longshotcamerasystems.com and even see Jim (who, as an aside, bears a striking resemblance to my Photoshop hero Pete Bauer). Priced at $199 it may not be for everyone, but what a blast it would be to walk around taking shots from 20 feet off the ground!

Camera: DMC-LX3
Shutter Speed: 1/30
Aperture: f/2
Processed in Lightroom and stitched in Photoshop CS4.

Adobe has just released Lightroom 3 Beta! Now before you rush out and start downloading I’d like to give you my take on this beta release to help you get off on the right foot.

This is a Beta version, which means it is not the finished product. Beta software is usually stable, but not necessarily bug free. Before you import, please start out by creating a copy of a few folders of photos (already safely backed up) and treat these copies as expendable test files. I don’t expect anything bad to happen to them, but with Beta software there is no reason to take any chances. Think of the Beta release as a way to get a taste for what Adobe has in mind for Lightroom 3, give it a test drive and see what you think. They really want your feedback to incorporate into the final release.

What I’m Most Excited About So Far

1. Improved rendering. The engineer-elves have added some new magic into LR3 to improve the rendering of our raw photos in regards to noise reduction and capture sharpening. Not finished yet (no Luminance noise reduction right now), but any effort to develop better looking photos gets my vote.
2. Improved watermarking. OK this may seem like a small thing, but it has been on my list for a very long time. I’m working on a LR3 Beta Watermarking tutorial that should be posted this week. Stay tuned! I’m not quite ready to give up LRMogrify yet though!
3. Custom Print Packages! Gone will be the days when I have to explain to people why they can’t print 3 different 4×6 photos on an 8.5×11 sheet of paper. Woot!

There is a lot more to love and a lot more to learn! I’ve got several LR3 Beta tutorials in the pipeline so stay tuned, but let me leave you with some valuable resources:

1. Go to Lightroom Journal and read all about the Lightroom 3 Beta.
2. Head over to Scott Kelby’s Blog and see what his top 10 list is all about.
3. Visit the NAPP Lightroom 3 Beta Learning Center to dive into some tutorials.
4. Check in with Lightroom plugin developer Jeffrey Friedl about using plugins with LR3 Beta.

OK, you are probably really itching to download the Beta … but please please please take a few minutes to read the Release Notes before you do. No, seriously, just give them a go over for known issues. I’m only trying to help!

OK, this Beta is free to everyone for the length of the Beta program so head over to Adobe Labs and take it for a spin. Check back here for more tutorials and resources in the coming days!

New! Updated tutorials for Lightroom 3 Beta:

• Boosting Lightroom Performance
• Replacing the Lightroom Preference File
• Back Up Your Lightroom Catalog

Here are the details:

10/26/2009

Boston Convention & Exhibition Center

10 am – 5pm

Read the full scoop here. Hope to see you there!

I finally had the chance to sit down with the latest issue of my favorite magazine Photoshop User. In this issue my Under the Loupe column covers how to control what metadata is included in your exported copies using Jeffrey’s Metadata Wrangler export plugin. This is the plugin you want to have in your toolkit if you want to have any level of control over what is or isn’t in your exported files.

Also in this issue … Matt Kloskowski covers how to set new raw defaults, Victoria Bampton has some great Lightroom tips, RC answers Lightroom questions and Sean McCormack has a kick butt feature article on sharpening. Oh, and there is all that Photoshop content in the beginning part of the magazine (kind of like the opening band for the headliner).

Be sure to stop by the Help Desk live if you have any Lightroom questions. Pete will know where to find me!

Camera: NIKON D200
Lens: 80.0-400.0 mm f/4.5-5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320
Aperture: f/8

This is a female monarch butterfly who, afflicted with some disease or parasite, has shriviled and non-functioning wings, but is otherwise in good health. I came upon her in a field while looking for monarch caterpillars. It seems I was late for finding caterpillars, but I brought her home and put her out in the garden every day for sun and nectar.  Over the course of this week she’s quite amenable to being our guest and she makes me take more breaks from the computer to go outside. I’m trying to convince her this is Mexico.