GUGGENHEIM - BILBAO

[Cheryl Slechta]

I'm finally organizing all of images from my trips to Italy/Spain from 2015 in LR (what a job!!!). This was a motion blur of the outside of the Guggenheim - 1/8 sec. Not converted to black and white - just the way it is - silver. And purposely high key. Thanks for looking.:S3:

[Anita Bower]

An interesting abstract, Cheryl. I like the composition, the various shades of black, grey, white, the sense of movement from lower left to upper right. I can't imagine myself even considering taking such a photo--I think you much have been inspired by the art you saw.
I would crop off the top blank white area down to at least the tip of the central triangle, maybe even cutting off a tad of it. I find the cropped version more appealing, with the crop containing the movement of the image.
I'm interested in what type of organizing you did in Lightroom. Did you use keywords? Other? I'm way behind in my Lightroom organizing. Also, do you process your images in LR?

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Anita, thanks for commenting. Well, art does funny things to us, I guess:S3: I could have spent a week just photographing the outside of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. I left the added space because the building itself is a soaring structure and there is so much more than what I caught with the motion blur. Anyway, that was my rationale and I like negative space more than most people do.

I've used LR since its inception and my folders have always been arranged by date with no descriptions. But since I've been traveling a lot the last 3 years I had gotten really sloppy and had a lot of sub-folders that were named that originated outside of LR and then I would forget to upload them into LR so I had a lot of "missing photographs" in LR. Anyway it was a big mess and getting bigger by the trip. Luckily, I have a Tim Grey Learning subscription and he has a tutorial on Cleaning Up Your Mess in Lightroom so I watched it and I'm making myself do the hard work of going back, creating folders within LR based on descriptions for my trips and other things that I want to keep track of - like my Zenfolio (which I'm also trying to re-do). It's a process that looks like it'll take forever but I'm determined to try to get it organized. I use keywords when I upload images but I don't ever seem to search by keywords. I've had LR since the first Beta edition so I've got quite a MESS to wade through.

I do as much processing in LR as I can and I especially like the Radial Tool, Graduate Filter and Adjustment Brush plus a lot of times I'll do an initial conversion to B&W in LR.
I still take everything into PS to do image clean-up and for using Nik or Topaz (mostly Nik) and adding textures, etc. I don't use as many layers compared to Dennis or Michael (or you) and I always flatten my images but PS is still critical to my workflow.

PS - I would highly recommend Tim Grey's tutorial - if you don't have a subscription you can buy just the one tutorial for $19.00.

[Anita Bower]

Cheryl:
Thanks for your reply re. Lightroom. I started keywording when there was a particular photo I couldn't find. But, I'm way behind. One of my winter projects will be learning to do a better job organizing in Lightroom.

[Hazel Grant]

I'm not the most organized but I am learning to title things. It may be Amelia at Picnic closeup. But at least I know from how my mind works what it is. Oh, the misery of seeing IMG and a number and not knowing what it is!

[Anita Bower]

I'm not the most organized but I am learning to title things. It may be Amelia at Picnic closeup. But at least I know from how my mind works what it is. Oh, the misery of seeing IMG and a number and not knowing what it is!
:
-)
:S3: