Experience and Lightroom 3

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Nov 30, 2012

Experience and Editing are two major roles that are played in my photography. I say that because I have been with my 18-55 and 55-300 ever since I bought my Pentax K-x. I bought the kit and was somewhat disappointed because of the functionality of the actual camera. I was getting tired of the fact that I had to switch batteries all the time and that It lasted nowhere near as long as a regular Li-on battery. Then somehow I get sensor scratches, that really pissed me off. It irked me more than none other because I'm a landscape photographer and nothing sucks more than not being able to shoot your highest aperture without sensor spots and scratches. So I figured, I'd try and resell it. Turns out, they discontinue the model and now it's worth less than half for what I paid for it ($777 from B&H Photo). Other camera departments were selling the camera kit for $450 new. So I wasn't going to sell my camera for less than that; I would end up with no camera and not enough money to purchase a new one. I decided that I should just stick it out.

To conserve battery, I turned off my camera after every sequence of shots.

And to get rid of the sensor spots at high aperture, I shot either at low aperture or If I really wanted to, I would spot clean every single spot.

This is where Adobe Lightroom became the biggest factor in my photography.  

This image above is an example of what Lightroom does for me. It helps me easily capture the dynamics of low-exposure and high-exposure of the ground because of the gradient filter. I prefer it over Photoshop only because it's more convenient and it's quicker especially if you're working on multiple photos at once. Much easier to use, All the tools you really need are there, the spot clean, the dodge and burn brush, and etc.

Lightroom 3 has made the biggest impact on me because It helped me with my constant frustration of sensor spots. Clean it up and the convenience of enhancing my photos were just pure out awesome. It's not as technical as Photoshop where you can get around all the nooks and crannies, but It's a more of a general editing which is great for me.  All I can say, It's made a huge impact because; You can view all your RAW files at the same time, and convert them all at once without much lag. It has all the tools that I specifically need. It's just that it's easy to use and all the tools you need for simple editing is there.

Experience, it's the greatest impact on anyone's photography. It influences you into what type of photography you want to do and develops a personality for every photographer so that each one is unique. Lightroom is an addition to one of my main tools that enhanced my photography. All the editing has helped me gain experience and grow patience for lengthy photo shoots and minor events and whatnot. If it were not for Lightroom, I would probably hate to shoot in RAW because I'd grow impatient with Photoshop uploading 10 RAWs at a time. In conclusion, and probably overstated in my submission, Lightroom and Experience are the biggest impacts on my photography.

- steezylistic