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I slept miserably last night but awoke to cooler temperatures and an overcast sky.

After breakfast at Alice’s, Cathi and I drove Granite road to look for a photo opportunity. Not far up, I pulled to the side and got out with my camera. The skies were dark and dramatic, the rolling hills clear of oil wells, if but for this short stretch. On our way home, we stopped at the grocers and did our shopping for the week. Once home, I opened up the windows to let the house air out and to take advantage of the cool but slight breeze. These cooler temps are a nice reprieve from the sudden turn to summer we’ve had of late. I washed the patio down while Cathi put some brownies in to bake. The laundry’s almost done, the dogs are quiet and ready for their nap and I’m settling in for the afternoon.

Yesterday I stumbled on a blog website for WFMU with over a hundred versions of Stairway To Heaven posted. I sampled a few, downloaded a few others for the iPod and my drive time listening this week.

I’ve enjoyed using the beta version of Adobe Lightroom so far. It’s changed my work flow. Before, I used to load shots into Photoshop one at a time and do my editing there. I’d have to have multiple shots open in PS to do any comparison, clicking one forward, then another. Now I load the whole shoot into Lightroom, pick the shots I like, do my processing, then do an export. Each shoot is organized by date and, if need be, by subject. Exports are put into a folder inside the original shoot folder. The exports are copies of the original pictures with the nondestructive edits made inside Lightroom, usually at a lesser quality, about 90 percent on the Lightroom scale. I still edit on occasions in Photoshop, usually adding an Unsharp Mask to the photo. I’m not entirely happy with the sharpening available in Lightroom. Nor am I completely comfortable with the b/w processing, though I still have a bit of learning to do with the program. Often I’ll just do my b/w’s in Photoshop, I’m more comfortable there. I like the options of using specific RGB channels to isolate for my b/w. However, I was messing with Lightroom today and there looks to be some options for b/w that I was not aware of and I’ll have to make a point of tinkering with. So far the program looks good. I’ll need to purchase it when it becomes available.

One thing about Lightroom, using it has made me more disciplined when it comes to organization of my pictures. I have a whole year’s worth or more of shots that need to be cataloged and added to the new library, all of which also need to be organized by dates. Over the time that I’ve had my camera, and been doing PAD, most of my library is only organized by picture number…