Ye Ol' Blog: I'm Back....

Hello folks. I know it's been awhile, but I think I'm in a much better position now than I was a few months ago. To start with, I've officially quit my former job as a studio manager, which leaves me with a lot more time to post on here. I've also just finished a huge reorganization of my image archive. That project ended up being a much larger undertaking than I'd originally thought it would be. It didn't help that I'd already started a "reorganization" project when I first purchased my new laptop, Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom. I quickly realized that, thanks to advances in digital asset management, my previous attempt to organize my archive was completely flawed. So, I started over. What had originally taken a couple of months to only partially complete, was completely scrapped and reorganized in a couple of weeks. Thanks to Lightroom and Bridge CS3. Granted, I haven't done much else for the last couple of weeks. But, my obsessive-compulsive needs have been fulfilled, and I'm now completely confident in my ability to shoot, catalog, and process a job without any concern about losing images or delaying the process. This whole experience acted as a really good learning opportunity for me as well. I have to say, after working with CS3 and Lightroom, I'm really impressed and excited about the potential for the future of digital imaging software. Okay, enough rambling! Time for a few of the first images I've tweaked with Lightroom instead of Photoshop CS. I know... I was living in the past!

Below, I've posted a few images I recently toned in Lightroom, a few older, a few newer. I'm still a little wary about my new laptop's LCD screen. I think it's a little blueish, even though I've calibrated it, I just don't trust it. I don't think it's too far off, but I'm a perfectionist, and I'm pretty sure (in the past) I've spent way too much time trying to keep a specific "feel" in an image while maintaining detail in the shadows. I have a feeling, that these subtle details don't read very well when images are viewed online where each person's monitor and "viewing environment" are very different. My old CRT was easy to adjust for, it was a little dark and a little warm. I still haven't figured out exactly how to adjust images for accuracy on this one. So, any thoughts, good or bad, are greatly appreciated.