This is what my dark room looks like.

I have a dual monitor setup, Lightroom on the left and Photoshop CS3 on the right.
I do the photo selection first with a series of rating and then color labels so I can easily navigate through thousands of images and then the initial tweaking in Lightroom and then move them over to CS3.

Each image can take as little as 1 minute to edit, but some need that special touch that can take 15 minutes of layers of CS3 editing or an hour or a whole day or longer to get the results I want. Sometimes I leave an image and come back to it later.

In Lightroom you can see I have several presents that give me some of my most loved effects, there are plenty more in CS3 but Lightroom gives me a great preview of the photo effects quickly.

When photo retouching and models, I typically work Photoshop at around 200-300% zoomed in. If you look closely, the sparkling wine is only at 50% right now, but that’s all that I need for this editing where I am effecting curves, colors, and saturation.

Of course, both monitors are calibrated with a ColorVision Spyder to get the prints the same colors as I see on my screens.

Ok, what I did was this, I started a duplicate layer, on the bottom layer I did shadow highlights and did added 1 stop of exposure. On the top layer I lowered the curves, then I added a layer mask and asked the bottom so the trees showed through.

Click on the link below for the full size.

During last night’s wedding reception it was a typical lighting situation and what I expect to see when I take a photo at a wedding reception. I look for properly exposed subjects in the center with the ambient lighting being shown in the background. In the photo below, this is exactly what I look for. This beautiful woman is looking great under lighting bounced up to the low ceiling. Settings are 1/40s at F/4 @ ISO200 flash at -2/3 exposure on TTL exposure (due to the low ceiling).

How did I choose -2/3 flash exposure? By looking for blown highlights on my display. Most DSLR will have a display setting that displays a view of blown highlights, once I determine it I usually keep the settings all night long. With this low ceiling, the Quantum 2×2 was hardly using any power and kept 4 full bars all night long.

See another expample of good flash exposure below.

Now with natural lighting, white balance is key, I hope your DSLR is as good as mine, it’s so hassle free with minimal image editing required.

There is an example of light bouncing incorrectly. This girl was walking back to her table carrying a drink or two or six and I just had to snap a photo. She was standing underneath a florescent light chrome reflector thing and you can see the reflector on the ceiling caused hotspots on her. Not everything can be perfect but it’s still a funny moment.

Photography Outdoors:
A Field Guide for Travel & Adventure Photographers

By: Art Wolfe and Mark Gardner

Now this wasn’t the first exposure I had to photography as I already had a very nice Nikon N90s but during my travels in ~1995 with Kettering Summer Field Studies in high school I did not have the SLR, only a Samsung P&S zoom with 6 rolls of film. I picked up this book at a visitor center at one of the many national parks I visited and read, read, and re-read cover to cover until I understood the principles and relationships between ISO, Shutter speed, and Aperture opening. Just reading and knowing wasn’t enough, the understanding what was going on and how each of them worked to capture light. This is my recomendation for a book for anyone that would like to get a better understanding of photography. This barely talks about digital photography, but you don’t need it to understand the principles of light and light manipulation. This is a very short book and can be read on a short plane ride. Amazon has this book and can be bought for hardly nothing, check it out at the link below.

Amazon