Lightroom Seminar at the Fishkill Holiday Inn

I had a great time at my first Dutchess Regional Professional Photographers (DRPP) meeting last weekend where I was invited to give a 2 hour seminar to their 50+ members on the basics of Adobe Lighrtroom. Held at the Holiday Inn in Fishkill NY, I was quite surprised and impressed with how well run it was and that there was not only a cocktail hour, but a full course meal with very nice seating as well. This certainly helped me feel more comfortable, and I had good conversation about what else – photography, with 5 other members at my table which I met for the first time.

We then proceeded to a conference room where I already had set up my Epson projector and MacBook Pro, and a very nice 8ft screen. I used Apple’s Keynote to give a short introduction to the basic concepts of Lightroom, how it differs from Photoshop and Bridge, best ways to use them all together in a productive workflow, as well as advantages of RAW files and how Lightroom stores and manages your images.

The second part was basically demonstrating the Lighrtroom UI (user interface), and giving everyone some insight into how I use Lightroom to manage my photographic workflow. I displayed many of my landscape images from my recent trip to Maine, where the recovery slider was put to good use with all of the snow in the scenes. Before I knew it, I was 2 1/2 hours into the seminar, and the fun was over. I received many great questions and positive compliments, and hope to be back again soon. (UPDATE: I’ve been asked to return for another seminar, so I’m considering different topics, but so far “Digital Workflow from Camera to Print” is the likely candidate).

Of course, this seminar only really scratched the surface of Lightroom and post processing in general, but my one-day workshops cover all of the features and their practical use, as well as allowing for more interaction with students and their own photography.