Study, study

Now that we're back in Maine, we have high speed internet again. Time to catch up on a bunch of things that were out of reach with the slow wifi on Jekyll Island.

Yesterday I got into the great Adobe TV videos about Lightroom, hosted by Julieanne Kost. I got through about 4 of them, on topics like whether to use one or multiple catalogs in Lightroom. Julieanne agreed with my decision to use one, though my total photo count is approaching 50,000. Another topic was when to use virtual copies or snapshots. Again, my approach was verified, though I have never used snapshots and there are times when I might find them useful. Of course, there was a stringer included to illustrate how useful snapshots can be if you take your images from Lightroom to Photoshop CS5, which I'm not going to be able to afford for some time. Another video was how to use the second monitor window in survey mode to view and align images for diptychs and triptychs, which I have rare occasion to use. The last video was about all the keyboard shortcuts in the Develop module, the sheer number of which put me to sleep for the night.

Today I looked into my copy of Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig, a great all around inspirational book for all kinds of photographers, as he had referenced several sites online that I couldn't access on Jekyll. The first reference I found was to watch "Annie Liebovitz, Life Through a Lens" which Chris said I could find on Netflix. Sure enough, it's there, but only as a DVD, but Netflix suggested that I watch "The Modernism of Julias Schulman" which was available online, and I took in about an hour of it. Schulman was the major photographer of the modern architecture movement that flourished in Los Angeles, Palm Springs, and Wisconsin. There was a small bit about photography, but more about the architects and his relationships with them. Searching further in Netflix, I found a couple Nat Geo shows about their photographers, and all of this inspired me to work on a portfolio from my Antelope Canyon images to consider showing to galleries here. I was further inspired to ask for some pointers from a neighbor who is a museum curator, and she gave me some tips on what's next. Which is, printing and matting photos, and making inquiries of the galleries. Tomorrow.

Visual Poetry is still open on my desk, and there will be more websites to explore in the future.