Hello my friend,

Last week’s poll put numbers behind something I’ve noticed for years. 41.8% of you said the most difficult part of editing a landscape photo is making it feel more three-dimensional, while 29.4% said it’s keeping an edit natural. Together, 71.2% of you selected what I believe are two sides of the same problem: How do we create more depth without making the photograph look overworked?

Depth doesn’t come from brightness alone. It comes from the relationship between light & shadow, and from knowing which areas should draw attention and which should remain quiet. Strengthen that relationship, and the photograph feels more dimensional. Push it too far, and the edit starts calling attention to itself. The goal isn’t to invent light that wasn’t there. It’s to help the best light already captured in the RAW file do its job.

That idea is at the heart of The Art of Shaping Light, my new Lightroom editing course launching October 8. Below, you’ll see the same photograph before and after editing. No new light was created, the edit simply gives the existing light a clearer purpose.

If you’d like to take a closer look at what changed, I created a short breakdown explaining the four decisions I made to shape the existing light while keeping the finished photograph believable.

​​​​See the 4 Decisions That Shaped the Light​​

As always, thanks for being here.

Mark

P.S. In the September 24 edition of The Morning Blaze, I’ll take you inside The Art of Shaping Light for the first time and show you what the course teaches, who I created it for, and how the lessons will help you approach light more intentionally during the editing process.

📺 MY NEW VIDEOS

I Never Edit in Lightroom Alone

After last week’s video about the changes to Luminar, I received a ton question I get almost every time I make a video using something other than Lightroom: Did I switch? I didn’t. Lightroom is still my main photo editor, but I never edit an entire photograph in Lightroom alone. On average, every image I finish passes through five different editing programs. In this video, I’ll show you how I use Lightroom, DxO Pure RAW 6, Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw, and Luminar together, what I use each one for, and why I think each program does one particular job better than the others.

Luminar Neo is Officially Gone - Here's What Replaced It

Luminar Neo is officially gone, but the software isn’t. Luminar Neo has become simply Luminar, bringing everything together under one unified brand. The latest Luminar update also introduces a cleaner interface, faster performance and a more streamlined photo-editing experience. In this video, I edit photographs from my recent photo retreat in Lake Tahoe to see how these improvements perform in a real-world landscape scenario.

🚀 NEW ZEALAND: TWO SPOTS JUST OPENED

After being sold out for the past eight months, two places have just become available for this December's New Zealand photo workshop.

Join me for 12 unforgettable days photographing some of the most spectacular landscapes on Earth, refining your craft in the field, & sharing the experience with a small group of like-minded photographers. Take a look at the complete itinerary, locations, and everything included below.

🔓 VAULT FAVORITES

Photo Editing Was Hard Until I Learned This!

The thought of editing my photos used to be something that caused me a great deal of anxiety and something I found quite intimidating. Just the shear number of tools available and decisions that had to be made was enough to turn me off from the entire process. But, there was one moment in particular, a light bulb moment, that made everything click for me. In this video, I'll review the defining moment for me that made photo editing much easier.​​

📖 GOOD READS The Controversial World of Deleting Photos: Choosing the Best Method Deleting photos from your SD card may seem like a straightforward task, but in reality, it's a topic rife with controversy and varied opinions. The “potential” damage to your camera and SD card, coupled with the multitude of ways to perform this task, can be overwhelming. In this article, we'll delve into the different methods of deleting photos from your SD card, weighing the pros & cons to identify the easiest, safest, and most efficient approach. 1. Deleting Individually In-Camera: The first method involves deleting each photo individually in-camera, using the dedicated button most cameras offer for this purpose. While this may have been a common practice in the past, it is neither efficient nor advisable due to the risk of deleting valuable shots based solely on the camera's LCD screen. Plus, it would flat out take forever! 2. Transferring & Deleting with Your Computer: This method involves taking the SD card out of the camera, transferring the media to a computer, and then either using the camera's delete-all function to clear the card or manually dragging the files from the SD card to the computer's recycle bin. While these methods offer more control, they come with their drawbacks, such as accidental file dumps:) >> Read More​