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🚨 Lightroom is Lying About Exposure (Here's the Fix)
Published 3 months ago • 4 min read
Hello, my friend!
I’ve been quietly working on something behind the scenes for most of this year, and I’m finally getting close to the finish line. It’s a brand new course, and without question, it’s the most complete and comprehensive one I’ve ever made.
✅ I’ve got two quick questions for you that would really help me wrap things up before its release in October.
How confident do you feel editing a flat RAW file from start to finish?
Most photographers are taught to get everything perfect in-camera, but what if that mindset is actually holding you back? In this video, I'm breaking down the one rule I ignore on every photo I take: shooting for the crop. I'll show you why I intentionally shoot wider than needed, how cropping in post can lead to stronger compositions, and why clinging to the "no crop" mentality could be limiting your photography. Whether you're shooting for social media, large prints, or just trying to improve your composition, this approach gives you more flexibility and better results.
Lightroom is Lying About Exposure (Here's the Fix)
Lightroom has a serious blind spot that no one's talking about, especially if you're a landscape photographer. In this video, I break down the fundamental flaw in Lightroom, the complete lack of a dedicated mid-tone slider. For anyone working with high dynamic range scenes: sunrises, sunsets, backlit forests, dramatic light - mid-tones are where the heart of the image lives. Yes Lightroom gives us tools for shadows, highlights, white tones, and black tones, but nothing for the most important part of the histogram.
There's a ton of information surrounding tips, tricks, and techniques regarding how to edit photos, but the basics can be summed up rather quickly. And the basics are the foundation of any good photo editor, but also the most important part of it all, as the basics are where most of the heavy lifting occurs and the rest is just polishing all the small details. In this video, I'll review the editing process I go through on all my landscape photos in an effort to provide you with a framework you can follow to not only help you stay organized, but to also ensure nothing is missed.
One of the more common questions I’ve heard recently has to do with the deciding factors that should be accounted for when determining which lens is best for a particular composition. I think as landscape photographers we all generally fall into one of the following two categories, we’re either the single composition or multi-composition type of photographer. If you’re the single composition kind you’re the type that gets on-location, identifies the composition, sets up the shot and waits for the conditions to be best ultimately walking away with a series of images of the same exact composition with the only difference being the conditions. Or, if you’re the multi-composition kind, then you’re the type that gets on-location, settles on a composition, grabs a couple of images and moves on looking for additional compositions within the scene.
I personally see pros and cons to each approach, if you’re the single composition type then you’ll more than likely be the one that comes away with the single spectacular image that has the best conditions, but it’ll only be one image. And if you’re the multi-comp kind then there’s a chance you could miss the very best conditions with your favorite composition, but you’ll more than likely come away with a series of good images that better tells the story of the particular location. And, the reason I bring this up is because I don’t think there’s always a single best answer to the question, “What’s the perfect lens for this composition” rather I think each lens in your bag has the potential to create a unique and intriguing version of the composition you’re facing.
This is something I’ve been trying to improve upon over the last year called ‘working the scene’. Where you create a set of images that better tells the story of your particular location and each lens in your bag is a tool that can be used to create the images for this story board. Something that’s helped me recently in my quest to create sets of images is when I’m on-location I think of the following four items which in turn helps me determine the lens to reach for with a particular scene.
1) Supporting Elements
When I’m surveying a scene in an effort to settle on a specific composition I ask myself what are the supporting elements of the scene or stated differently, “what do I love about this scene”? Asking myself this question enables me to inventory the situation to better understand which lens or focal length will be required in order to capture all the supporting elements I love about the scene. >> Read More
🤓 PHOTO NERDS
📸 The word "Photography" is derived from the Greek word to draw with light.
👁️ The human eye equivalent f-stop is f/8.3 in bright conditions and f/2 in darker conditions.
✨ INSPO
"It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are." - Paul Caponigro
"Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like." - David Alan Harvey
🌳 FINAL WORD
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📨 Join 56,000+ Photographers enjoying The Morning Blaze - my free, online photography publication where I share photo tips, tutorials, & inspiration I’ve gained throughout my journey from beginner to professional Landscape Photographer.
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