Mark Sirota - Lightroom Guru

[Mark Sirota]

I'm an avid amateur photographer. Most of my photos these days are of my kids, but I really enjoy the too-rare opportunity to shoot other things when I get the chance.

I switched to digital capture in April 2''6 with a Nikon D2'', and have been using Lightroom since then. Apparently my contributions on the original Lightroom beta forum were valuable, and I was named one of 5' or so "Most Valuable Contributors" to that process. (Several of the others are also here on LightroomForums as well.) I also participate regularly on Flickr's Adobe Lightroom group discussions at http://www.flickr.com/groups/adobe_lightroom/discuss/.

Before April 2''6 I was shooting and scanning film, with a Photoshop-based workflow, but I was never a Photoshop guru. Since starting up with Lightroom, I have quite deliberately given up Photoshop entirely, except for the occasional test. I do almost everything with Lightroom, and have found that there are surprisingly few things I miss.

I contribute to forums like this one not only to help, but to learn. I'm never satisfied with own work, always looking to improve my knowledge and skills. One of my other photographic pursuits right now is lighting. I've learned more about lighting in the last 18 months from David Hobby at http://www.strobist.com/ than I had in my first 25 years or so of photography.

At my day job I am the Associate Director for Network Engineering and Services for a top-tier research university, serving a community of about 4',''' users. My professional background is in UNIX programming and system administration.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

That's interesting that you've avoided Photoshop Mark. I think we can often fall into the trap of just doing 'what we know' and reverting to old habits, even when they're not the most efficient, so I think that's a really good idea.

It's great to have your level of experience here, not just in LR, but in computers in general.

 

[Ian Farlow]

Agreed... welcome.

 

[CyberPet]

Interesting that you don't like Photoshop at all. Of course you can do a lot in Lightroom, but I feel I need to go into Photoshop to do those finishing touches to any image. I feel handicapped if I don't get to do it. Silly I know, but even if the images looks ok out of the camera, I somehow want to add more pop to them.

 

[Mark Sirota]

Petra, I didn't say I didn't like Photoshop, just that I stopped using it. (Actually, I don't like the user interface at all, but I do like the power it offers and the size of the user community.)

My feeling is the best way to learn a new tool is to use it exclusively. It makes sure I won't fall back on old habits when there might be a better way.

Obviously there are some things one cannot do without Photoshop, but there are also a great many things one can do without it, and also a great many things that one might have done but didn't really need to do.