Inside the Lightroom Masterclass

We had a great Lightroom Masterclass workshop this weekend, and I want to thank everyone who attended and helped make it a learning experience for all. One of the great benefits of teaching any subject is that you learn more than you expect, especially when students present challenging questions. Such was the case this weekend as we explored how to become more efficient with Lightroom, and spend less time with repetitive tasks or time consuming operations.

For example, I’m a big advocate of using nested or hierarchical keywords, which greatly increases the value of keywording when it comes to performing searches. In the case of locations, I start with the country, state, geographic area, city, park, street, etc. So my keywords would be nested as follows:

United States > New York > Hudson Valley > Hudson River > Long Dock

Here’s how it actually looks in Lightroom with additional keywords:

The major advantage of this from a workflow standpoint is that any image keyworded with “Long Dock” will automatically get all of the other keywords added to it. This is a huge time saver, and a way to make sure that a particular image gets found regardless of how specific or broad the search term is. The easiest way to create your hierarchies is to think about broad terms, then narrow them down to the most specific keyword you need. Create them individually in Lightroom, then just drag and drop them on top of each other in the Keyword List panel to create the nesting.

This is just one of the many topics we covered on Saturday which I hope will increase students enjoyment of using Lightroom. I’m already working on an a new workshop to cover many advanced features of Lightroom including creating web galleries and printing, and also spend more time working with students one on one for their specific needs. Look for the dates of the Advanced Lightroom Masterclass soon…

Finally, I’ll be at the Professional Club of Lower Fairfield County in Connecticut tonight presenting a talk titled “Beauty Within – The Journey of Landscape Photography” which I’ve been working on for the last few days. As usual, I’ll stress that I continue to be a student and as such only present ideas and concepts to inspire and motivate creativity. If I can only remember my opening lines, I should be ok – wish me luck!