Recycling

You remember that hiking trip you made a couple years ago? The one where you took a bazillion pictures that are stored deep somewhere in your computer, just waiting for a hard drive failure to happen (you should back-up your stuff by the way, but that's not the subject of this post).

The Sierra Mountains from Chickenfoot Lake Fine prints available

Well I did and I went back and looked through the pictures I took when Gabe and I hiked up to Chickenfoot Lake (it actually looks like a chickenfoot...) up in the Sierra Mountains, around Mammoth Lakes.

Gabe the Sierra hiker

While I wait for my next hike opportunity, I figured I'd look through and see if I can bring a little more out of some of the pictures I took on that trip. I had a few good ones in there, nothing too exceptional. This trip was almost exactly a year ago and my skills weren't as good as they are today (I still have lots and lots to learn!).

The Sierra Mountains from Chickenfoot Lake Fine prints available

Some of those pictures used to be in my portfolio but after a recent review, I didn't like them as much anymore. They were processed through Apple Aperture which is a great photo editing software to start with. I opened a few of them in Adobe Lightroom and started playing with them. I haven't been using Lightroom for very long but what a great tool! I was able to pull out a lot more out of the pictures than with Aperture. Here is an example:

Apple Aperture

That's about as much as I could with with Aperture at the time (I'm sure it could be better).

The Sierra Mountains from Chickenfoot Lake

Adobe Lightroom

That's what I could get with a few quick edits!

The Sierra Mountains from Chickenfoot Lake Fine prints available

Now that I've experienced that, I've transfered a whole bunch of shots from my Aperture library to the Lightroom library in order to sort and find pictures I could enhance just that little bit. Well I know what I'm going to be doing for the next few days!

A Frenchman in the Sierras