Ace developer Jeffrey Friedl is among the first to develop some kick-ass plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. If you’re a photographer using Lightroom (and you should be), and you’ve got a Flickr, Zenfolio, or SmugMug account. Then you absolutely HAVE to grab (and install) these plug-ins.

I’ve been using the SmugMug plug in for a week or so, and wow… uh WOW.

Follow this link to plug-in goodness….

If you haven’t checked out the Project: Photoshop Lightroom site yet (and you’re a Lightroom user) you should. There’s a bunch of tutorials there created by none other than Adobe Evangelist, Julianne Kost. Good stuff.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the awesome D65 workshop put on by Seth Resnick and his wife Jamie Spritzer. It was a great hands-on walk thru of the equipment, software, technique, philosophy behind Seths highly effective workflow. Mainly focused around Lightroom, the workshop started off basic, then quickly ramped up into advanced training — both workflow technique, and business.

Seth and Jamie are a great presenter pair (think Regis and Kelly). They play extremely well off of each other, yet somehow manage to cram their mountain of knowledge into an easily digestible weekend.

If you have the opportunity to attend this powerful workshop, jump on it.

Ok, I know I haven’t blogged in a while. It’s not expressly because I’ve been lazy (ok, maybe a little)… but rather that I recently joined Adobe Systems, Inc. as the Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Professional Photography and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I’ve been crazy busy of the last several weeks with Photoshop World, the Eddie Adams Workshop, and most recently PhotoPlus Expo East… life is good.

So, in addition to frequenting San Jose Airport, I’ve been patiently waiting for the Adobe powers-that-be to grant permission for me to kick-off blogging about photography from an Adobe perspective, as well as Lightroom.

So, long post short… I now have written permission to write about Adobe stuff, my stuff, and what ever other stuff I want. I will do my best to keep you up to speed on professional photography at Adobe, and the latest developments in the Lightroom-verse. Watch this space.

Talk about once in a lifetime opportunities. Last weekend, my friend Robert Evans invited me to tag along as second-shooter to one of his weddings. For me initially it was both business and pleasure, but it ended up being more pleasure.

Having recently accepted a position with Adobe Systems as Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I have been spending many hours getting to know the software – and the workflows of the photographers who live by it. Robert is one of those photographers, and this opportunity was almost too perfect. How often does a guy get to tag along with one of Los Angeles’ premiere A-list celebrity photographers – and see his workflow from beginning to end? It was a fascinating experience.

Robert is an amazing photographer, he’s been shooting for over 18 years and has become “best friends” with light. By this I mean he can anticipate its every move. He’s a human light meter. You can spot a professional when they can glimpse at a scene and spout out an f/stop and shutter speed combination… this is what he did for the entire event, his camera was on manual the entire time. Who needs Canon’s 9-bazillion point metering system when you’ve got 18 years of experience behind you. Be sure to check out his blog to follow him around the globe.

Thanks for the opportunity Robert, you sir, rock.

note: all of the images in this post were shot by Robert Evans.

I’ve been spending some (ok, alot of) time over the past several weeks getting familiar with the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom application. I’m amazed at how fast I can create stunning (at least to me) effects with very little effort… as compared to say, a more complicated program like Adobe Photoshop.I feel like a kid with a new toy! I’ve been sifting through my old shoots and finding new ways to bring new life into the images. Here’s a shot of a model I photographed several months ago. I think she looks amazing in high-contrast black and white… in Lightroom the conversion took about 3 minutes. And that includes the time it took for me to learn the various controls and keep my cat Baba from walking on my keyboard.Click on the image to view a larger version.