Mentoring: JJ Casas - Day 8

"Managing Your Photo Files"Date of Mentoring: 4/27/11
- Number of Hours: 2 hours
- Total Hours: 15 hours, 30 minutes

Actions:
- View how Adobe Photoshop Lightroom functions
- Discussion of how buttons function for the program
- View how Adobe Photoshop layers are created

How Am I Doing?:
For this session, it was just mainly me listening while JJ explained how he manages his photos and how Lightroom works. I was able to see how he organizes and names his files, going by date (year.month.day), followed by the type of event (i.e. wedding, photo shoot, behind the scenes), and then lastly, the specific event name (i.e. Bob & Jill's SF Wedding). Then, he showed me an example of what each Lightroom editing tool did using photos from a recent shoot he did. JJ explained what "culling" through your photos means: going through the pictures and separating the good ones from the bad ones. The advantage of doing this is that you can pick the photos that are "cream of the crop" and avoid wasting time on editing a picture that is just bad to begin with. After, JJ showed me how Photoshop works using a picture from a different photo shoot. Photoshop is great for helping a photographer see what edits he/she has made to a photograph so that he/she may refer back to those changes in the future if needed.

Next Action:
My 9th mentor meeting is tomorrow, April 28. I will get to try Lightroom on my own computer, since I did not get to do any editing with my own photographs today.