Lightroom Workshops – Six Years and Counting

I conducted a one-day workshop on Lightroom/Post-Processing in Bangalore on May 5th. As I was looking at the course material, I realized that it was my sixth year of mentoring photographers in Lightroom. Our initial few workshops included both Lightroom and Photoshop, and spanned across two days. We converted it to a one day Lightroom-only workshop because Photoshop is not something that you can cover in a weekend.

In these years, Adobe has made quite a few significant changes to the software to simplify it, but the core concepts still remain the same. With Lightroom CC, the app that we once knew has actually become a ‘classic.’ Lightroom Classic CC is what Adobe calls the software that desktop version. Lightroom CC is now for the ‘mobile’ crowd and uses the cloud to store images.

In this class, we had 9 participants, two of whom were French. We also had many participants who had either traveled with Darter on our tours before, or had attended our other workshops. This is certainly encouraging for us – people come back only when they are happy.

The venue for our workshop was the Honeycomb – Video Production Bangalore, Web Design office in Koramangala. It was great to work in a space dedicated for photographers. In case you weren’t aware, Honeycomb makes archival photo prints on imported media. We had at least 50 prints hanging on the walls of our classroom. Honeycomb also offers services like image retouching and website development. Do check out their website.

Lightroom can be both easy and daunting. A common question that I get asked always is – when do I stop editing? How much of Lightroom should I use to edit an image. This question is challenging one for me, because like the question itself, there is no definite answer. The best thing would be to use a number of examples to show what can be achieved.  As a mentor, I always strive to get the participants to understand the tricky topics like tonal correction first. To do this, I use some of my own photos as examples. As someone who loves landscape photography, I use more of such images for demonstration. However, I also recognize the need to have a variety of sample RAW files.

One collective feedback that I received in this workshop was to split the session into two days. What do you think? Should a Lightroom workshop be for one day or two days? Comment below and let me know.

If you are interested in a future Lightroom workshop, visit http://www.darter.in/ and stay connected through our Facebook page.