You can find links to Robert's site at the end of this article.

Make sure and read this post all the way through, as Robert's explanation of his Lightroom processing is very informative.

We look forward to more of Robert's posts!

Cold Sunrise - Lake Placid, Adirondacks

This was a very cold, early morning hike to a great sunrise location in the Adirondacks, and I really wanted to convey this feeling in the image “Cold Sunrise”. There are many cues that you can use to express how you feel when you’re at a particular location, and these involve all of our senses including sound, touch, smell, etc. Here I’ve tried to convey touch and feel by leading the eye onto the texture of frozen snow on these rocks in the foreground.

In addition, I think that the low fog in the valley conveys that stillness and silence that we often associate with these types of atmospheric events. When we can’t see very clearly, our other senses become more acute, and even though this is a photo, it triggers that sense in our minds to imagine what it would sound like to be there. Notice also the strong diagonals which guide the eye as mentioned before – cool to warm, texture to smooth, dark to bright, all contrasting elements.

Anyone looking at this photo will immediately understand what it must have felt like to stand on this frozen rocky ledge – at least that is my hope, and why it is important to continually practice the language of photography.

• Lightroom Workflow

As a bonus, I’ve included my Lightroom workflow so that you can get a better sense of how I processed this image with these ideas in mind in order to create the best interpretation of the RAW file.

The perfect mono conversion…its so subjective and down to personal taste does it even exist? Here is my quick 3 step process to having a go.

Editing with minimal screen furniture

Desaturate? Channel Mixer? Greyscale?

Of course there are many different ways to do a mono conversion and none of them are right or wrong. Some of you may have better or faster ways but this is the way that seems to give me the most pleasing results in a reasonable amount of time, especially for portraits.

The perfect mono conversion…its so subjective and down to personal taste does it even exist? Here is my quick 3 step process to having a go.

Before and after mono conversion

Desaturate? Channel Mixer? Greyscale?

Of course there are many different ways to do a mono conversion and none of them are right or wrong. Some of you may have better or faster ways but this is the way that seems to give me the most pleasing results in a reasonable amount of time, especially for portraits.

Another of my quick processing techniques, sharpening for web sized images. Whenever you re-size an image for the web you’ll find it looks a tad soft (if you think your images don’t, apply some sharpening and see how they suddenly seem to pop from the screen more than before), it’s easy to get back that nice crisp, clear look though. As usual there are many ways of doing it…I keep it nice and simple as this article below will show.

No sharpening and selective sharpening

Whilst the image above looks quite sharp to start with, I wanted the fine feather detail and head area to stand out just that little bit more, and this is how I did it. Remember, sharpening should always be the LAST step in your processing!

Ever had one of those shots that ‘almost’ worked but the framing was just off? Or you wanted to clone out a small distraction near the edge of the frame but there was too much detail to try and match with the clone stamp? Well here is a very quick and neat way to add in some extra canvas, and fill it with original picture information so it matches the rest of the image perfectly. It takes 30 seconds and requires no fiddling with the clone stamp and paint brush – which also makes this technique ideal for Photoshop beginners as well as more advanced users.

Before and After canvas extension

Ok, so the base image I am using for this demonstration is a little tight in the frame but it’s nice enough and serves as a good image to do this quick tutorial with. It’s a simple duck swimming across the water, however, I ran out of room to pan and so caught the duck too far to the right of frame so the composition isn’t ideal. The image would of course look better if the duck had a little more room in front of it than behind. The way a lot of people would tackle this is to extend the canvas and use the clone stamp and paint brush to try and put some detail back in the shot. This method is fine if you only want to touch up a plain area, but, as soon as you start needing to add in area’s that have some detail or a variation in light/colour change etc…well, things can start to get fiddly and time consuming as you try to match the old canvas with the new…but without having duplicate area’s of detail or patches of light and dark that don’t flow together well – the tell tell sign of a rushed clone job.

With this image there are some texture/ripples in the water and although they are quite simple I don’t really want to have to spend time trying to clone them. So, let’s see how I quickly gave the duck a little more space to swim in to, whilst still retaining the original texture and ripples in the water just in front of the duck.

The spot removal tool looks like a big O with an arrow pointing to the right. It can be found in the Develop panel, in between the crop tool and the red eye tool. When clicked, you will see an option to Clone or Heal the spot. You can also adjust the size of the area and the opacity you want to use for the removal. Typically I use "Heal" and adjust the other sliders to match the spot. The really nice part of this tool is that Lightroom will try to fix the spot on its own by finding a matching area! However, if the fix is bad you can just drag and drop the matching area to find one that works. Simple, right? It really is!