One thing I love about a life-long journey into photography is that you are constantly learning and have a tangible record of your growth over time. When I first started editing my JPG images I took hours using destructive methods that left much to be desired.
Years of working as a photojournalist, wedding photographer, agricultural photographer, and freelance artist, I've changed things around a ton in my workflow to include non-destructive methods on RAW images that, in a way, saves an enormous amount of time while bringing out the very best in what I capture.
In fact, in my wedding work, I have narrowed that down to processing well over 800 images to a half day.
I've been blessed to be invited to teach two sessions at this year's Agricultural Media Summit in Indianapolis. My first session will be on my journey through off-camera lighting and teaching attendees how to introduce off-camera flash photography into their assignments. My second workshop will be a near three-hour deep dive into everything I do in Lightroom and Photoshop and will consist of non-destructive editing methods used on everything from landscapes to portraits. I will also go over how I use NIK software to fine tune my images and bypass Facebook's photo algorithm to upload the highest quality photos to Facebook.
I'm going to make this workshop as hands on as possible, where you will have the opportunity to edit the same files I am editing. I'm a teacher by heart, and I believe the best way to learn is through hands-on application.
For those of you out on the web, I hope you enjoy this time-lapse video of my editing process condensed into just over six minutes. Feel free to send any questions my way. For those of you who are attending the Ag Media Summit, I hope to see you there and learn something from you as well. One thing I've learned over the years, we're stronger as a community.
The video below goes over how I edited the two most popular images from my recent photo session of a Kansas Wheat Farmer
Do you have any questions? Leave a comment below and I'll answer them as soon as I can.
Scott Stebner is an agricultural photographer based out of Kansas who specializes in creating cinematically-styled environmental portraits that inspire the agricultural community. He is available for travel across the world.