Some before and after pictures...

"Faith in your photographic abilities is the willingness to venture into darkness without a flash." -Cliff Hollenbeck

I would change the quote to fit me... Faith in your photographic abilities is the willingness to venture into the unknown.  I do not like to venture into the unknown.  Right now, that unknown is learning new photo editing software: Lightroom 5.  I tried out Lightroom as a trial when the edition was Lightroom 3.  I decided the learning curve was too much for me to tackle, so I did not venture there.  Lately, I have heard many say how much they like it for organization, and editing.  I decided to take the plunge, because:  1.  I need a better way to find my photos.  I spend too much time trying to find photos;  2. The photo editing can be applied to multiple photos cutting down editing time; 3.  It does almost everything the full photoshop program does at a fraction of the cost.

I had a pretty rough start, and I am not out of the woods yet.  I still do things that make a mess, don't know how to undo my mess, and I have to call for some expert help from someone, (Rey), who understands Lightroom so well.  Maybe I will get there one day.

Today, I want to share some before and after photos.  They are from my trip to visit my suit mate in Texas.  Some of the photos I thought were beyond hope, but I decided to see what I could do with them in Lightroom.  These four little pictures took me most of the afternoon to edit, since I had to read, then adjust, read, and adjust.  I was very happy with the results, though.  And hopefully, I will get faster!

I wanted to see what the black and white conversion did to a picture.  I did bump up some of the elements in the photo to give it some pop.

Before: underexposed, flat, and pretty bad.

After

Before

After:  I wanted to see if I could make a HDR look using one photo.  What do you think?

Before:  These spiders were everywhere.  On the eaves of the houses, fences, and everywhere.  I was told you do not kill them because they eat the grasshoppers.  See the grasshopper nicely wound up in the spider's web.  These things are huge.  And there were tons of grasshopper everywhere.  It was like being in Egypt in the midst of the locust plague.  

After

Before

After

That is all my experimenting for today.  I have so much more to learn.