On Wednesday the 5th of March a friend and I attended a Lightroom 5 seminar at the Los Angeles Convention Center. We took the Metrolink to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and then hopped the subway to just a couple of blocks from the Convention Center.  Great way to get to downtown Los Angeles from Ventura county instead of fighting the traffic during rush hour.

It was attended by roughly 450 or so interest folks. The seminar was given by Kelbyone and the instructor was Matt Kloskowski. What a crackup the guy is. Has a great delivery for the instruction aspect and likes to offer up every so often some of his tricks that are not shown in the books. The seminar started at 10 a.m. with the covering of the Library module of the program. Then just before lunch break, Matt started the Develop module (which is probably the most important). This is the module where the magic is applied to the images taken by the photographer. Matt showed a couple insights into some of the tricks and he got a BIG WOW afterwards. As part of the seminar, Kelbyone supplied a very useful instruction manual with notes that Matt included in the text to help you remember what he discussed during the seminar.

I didn’t think that their could be a program as powerful as Photoshop which I’ve used off and on over the years, but let me tell you, Lightroom 5 stream lines the photo editing of my images to the point that I can easily say that I am hooked on using Lightroom over Photoshop for general editing and doing it quickly. Don’t get me wrong, Photoshop is a superstar when it comes to Graphic Layouts and performing some of the magic that one is accustomed to seeing from Photoshop.

One of the things I forgot to do was take my phone along for the trip. Yep, I left it sitting on my desk at home. The reason I bring this up is that the area around downtown Los Angeles has many photo opportunities along with the area around the convention center. Many tall building and especially the Staples Center where the Los Angels Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, and Los Angeles Kings play the sport that they are affiliated with.

I’ve gone to many of these seminars hosted by Kelbyone and have not left without being amazed at what I’ve learned. I will continue  to take these seminars to further as to my knowledge of the artistic aspect of my my photography.