I’m very excited about an opportunity to team up with my friends Jeff Leimbach and Randy Van Duinen at The Digital Photo Workshops! The first workshop is a trip to Death Valley. This is a brand new location for me and I really can’t wait to get there. This workshop is being led by Rick Sammon, who is a phenomenal photographer and teacher. I’ve attended a number of Rick’s workshops at Photoshop World and he has such great energy for teaching photography that it will be a real pleasure to spend a few days with him in such a cool (hot!) place. I won’t be formally teaching Lightroom, but I’ll certainly be at everyone’s disposal for answering any and all Lightroom related questions. I also heard that onOne is giving all attendees to this workshop a free copy of Perfect Effects 3. Thanks onOne!
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.
Thanks to everyone who left a comment. This week hit me like a hurricane, so my apologies for not picking the winner sooner. No entries came in after the deadline. There are 23 comments from 22 people, so I assigned everyone a number based on the order the comments appeared, then used random.org to generate a random number between 1 and 22. The winning number it picked was 12:
So congrats to Keith Tharp! I plan to have more giveaways over the course of this year so stay tuned for the next! I’ll also try and provide some options for folks outside of North America. Thanks again!
I still hope they add ways to put several text boxes on the images when printing. The single identity plate is not sufficient.
Hey Rob-
So, Lr 4…the two things I’m initially most excited about are the additions to the Adjustment Brush (especially the ability to paint in things like noise reduction and white balance), and also the Photo Book stuff. I haven’t made a lot of photo books in the past, but it’s something I’d like to do more of.
Hope all is well in your world.
I would like to see a pano stitching feature available in Lightroom 4.
It’s a stretch, but content aware would be nice in LR 4.
I think the Print Adjustment sliders in the Print Module will be one of my favorite features when I print my own photos. They normally tend to print dark.
I agree with the commenter above, content aware in LR4 would be amazing!
I would love to have healing/cloning option to be like CS5. I would also like to be able to add text to my photos. Thanks for the giveaway.
I’d like to have the option to use the button adjustments from the Tone Control section of the Library module in the Develop module. There are regular times that I need to make various adjustments to an image using Develop and yet will want to simply change the exposure by a specified amount – using the slider is still more time consuming than a button.
To complement this feature, it would be nice to be able to specify how much a button push changes the exposure/recovery/fill, etc.
I would love to have a clone/healing tool that allows the user to make a selection, rather than just having the circle. That would save me a trip to Photoshop. Occasionally I can clone out an object by using multiple spots, but it doesn’t always work.
Probably the best features that I have noticed (and I haven’t played as much as I want) involve the ability to better change the highlights and shadows in the basic box. I do a lot of high school sports that are very poorly lit and that feature seemingly is giving me greater control over my output.
I like the LR4 book module as a good start. Needs to show the aspect ratio for book module page templates. Needs an easy way to add book module page templates with text and drop shadows. Needs to allow addition of drop shadows to these templates. Would love clone/healing tool like PS. Print adjustment slider for printing is brilliant!
The thing that will have the biggest impact for me is all of the improvements in the ‘tone’ and ‘presence’ sliders. I’m really enjoying the clarity slider now.
I am loving the Noise reduction in LR4, its WAAAAAY better than LR3 and I have had some really good results with it. Saves me having to get a separate program, so saves money and time, and Im all for that!
The changes in clarity rock. No more halos will allow a greater impact on sharpness. The new tona mapping of the sliders are great.
I’m fairly new to LR and just learned a lot of the features that LR3 has, but one thing we discussed that isn’t an option in LR is content aware, when I saw that done over in CS5, I was impressed!! Would be very cool to have something similar/easier in LR!! Thanks again for a great class!
I’d like to see Convert to DNG added to the Tethered shooting options.
Processing images in LR is already very powerful, and the addition of targeted area editing will save many a trip over to Photoshop and back. But wouldn’t it be nice to add the option of a square-cornered Adjustment Brush tool/cursor? And would it be asking too much to add a Shift Key constraint to delineate straight lines masks? Shift-clicking from point to point with a non-circular cursor would really speed up masking along straight edge areas.
I’m working on a project for a client who uses LR’s slideshow module. It would be super helpful if the module would allow a slide to have two photos per slide (not just a background like it allows for now). Also would be super helpful to be able to edit the text per slide for labeling. Not looking to make a powerpoint style slideshow, but just be able to make a reference or note or two on each slide if needed.
Thanks, Rob!
For photos, I’m pretty happy with LR3 as it is. The one thing I’m really looking forward to in LR 4 is the video handling. When distributing material of an event, it was a nuisance to switch programs for the video part of it.
Thinking about missing features – I would really love to see an automatic flagging feature applying what is now achieved by the “x” key to blurred and under/overexposed photos. That and the Panorama stitching mentioned above.
I would love to see…
-a networked Lightroom 4
-keep performance fast throughout (i.e. don’t make anything slower)
-add a Lightroom iPad app to allow import/basic edits to catalogs
My favorite thing is that I no longer need to ga back and forth between Lightroom and Aperture. The slideshows are better and the ability to do books is great. Now I can keep all my editing to one program.
I would love to see pano merge added to LR4!
I’m looking for png import, so that I can manage diagrams created on my iPad or iPhone with eg Sylites in the same collection as the photographs to which they refer
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