The final day of the “summit” has a slightly different format.
Jeff Shewe the Lightroom “guru” will spend the first half of the morning showing how he has helped with some problem images that various people have asked for help with.
After the break he will help other individuals with images on a one to one basis.
Mark has an image he wants to do some work on and manages to get to the front of the queue but when Jeff finds out that he is dealing with an Aussie Mark learns it’s going to cost him a bottle of Australian red ...
After this session we will all submit an image which will be critiqued by Alain and Jeff during the entire afternoon session and is open to audience comment as well.
Although this will be extremely interesting it is also extremely nerve wracking as I have been wandering around during the entire seminar looking at the images everyone is working on and I’m about ready to either slit my wrists or give away all my camera gear. There are some really nice images that people are working on.
Eventually I bite the bullet and select this one as perhaps my least embarrassing image
The session is very interesting as Jeff is extremely quick working in Lightroom and every time he or Alain suggests an improvement Jeff is able to show how to do it immediately. This is very effective and much better than just saying “it’s good but it might be improved if you do this ...” as you can actually see it happen. The only drawback is it’s so quick it’s hard to follow exactly how it’s done.
They are also unfortunately working in alphabetical order which means I will be second last. The next couple of hours is very nerve wracking as they work their way to my image. On the one hand it seems that nearly everyone has submitted an image which I don’t believe to be their best but on the other hand they are still very good and I don’t want to feel like a complete idiot when it comes to my turn.
When we finally get there my image is received by very complimentary audience remarks much to my relief and Jeff and Alain decide that with a different cropping and some tonal adjustments it is much improved.
I am much relieved. The only problem now is that it has been cut down considerably and cannot be printed very large; I need to go back and shoot it again if I want to print it bigger but somehow I don’t think it’s going to happen as we leave early tomorrow.
I know that there is a lot of “feel good” marketing done by the organisers of these events, which is very successful as a number of attendees are back for their third or fourth seminar, but I must admit to a certain pleasure when I bump into Alain at the restaurant after dinner and he remembers my image and is able to talk about the details. He can probably do it for every image but it still makes me feel good ...
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