I don’t like to waste time looking for pictures. I want to be taking them, working on them, using or admiring them – anything other than spending valuable time finding what I need.
So long before Lightroom, I used cataloguing programs and was well-known in the iView MediaPro and Extensis Portfolio communities, two of the best-known DAM programs at the start of the century.
Before photography my career was in accounting, then financial IT consulting, so I was used to categorising and quickly finding answers from large amounts of data. Once my my own photography had moved from film to digital and I began accumulating many thousands of pictures, cataloguing and digital asset management had come quite naturally.
One right way
I have little patience with bland tutorials that tell people things are easy when they’re not, and even less when bad advice is defended with statements like “your mileage may vary” or “it works for me”. Lightroom is not a difficult program, but proficiency demands a little effort, some discipline, and a bit of clear thinking. Good practice is good practice. And unlike Photoshop, in Lightroom there is usually only a single right way to do something – that’s its point.