It has only been a year since I took the plunge and jumped into this photography business with both feet running. I have learned a great deal and been mentored by some of the best. I count it a credit to God that I had the rare opportunity to meet some of the most influential and inspiring photographers I could have at one place. It was awesome to so quickly bond with them during the exercises and tasks at the Anti-workshop. If you can’t decide on a workshop to attend, I highly recommend it.

When I met these people, I literally only knew of three of them beforehand (Erin Vey by way of Flickr, Heather Cole by way of fellow Kansas Citian, and Fred Egan by way of blog-stalking). I ended up getting to know so many more rockstars in the industry, it is not even funny… I shot with ever-so-fabulous Jasmine Star on one exercise…with Jesh De Rox and our subject Jessica Claire on another (see below). I listened to Doug and Chenin and John and Dalisa. Got to know Jan Garcia and Ed Atrero and so many more.

Anyway, I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction into this new world of wedding photography. I hope I made a decent impression on these people, but I want them to know that they made a HUGE impression upon me. I look forward to making my mark and someday being counted as a mentor myself.

The above photos are a few photos from the Jessica Claire session, but edited with my lightroom presets and Doug Boutwell’s brand new Totally Rad Actions 2, the Revenge. Go buy them, they are totally rad and a bit genius.

If you are in the Kansas City area, you HAVE to attend the veryaltf Tour from the leg-en-dary John Michael Cooper and his lovely bride, Dalisa, (who we all know really wears the pants in the family…inside joke for Dalisa).

Free is good, right? Right. Quality Adobe Lightroom presets are good, right? Right. Well, that is what I’ve got for you. Quality free lightroom presets! Download them now!

The two new free presets are part of my new Steller Utility series (coming soon). Gray and Snap are great little ‘utility’ style presets that I use fairly regularly and I have a bunch of other things (including some actions and textures) that I am working on to put together a full Utility set. In the mean time, I hope all my photographer friends out there enjoy these little gems.

One of these presets (the Guru GreenGold) is part of a series that is included in the 52 Steller Lightroom Preset Pack. You can see samples of many of the presets and even purchase the set for only $40 at stellergear.com. Also, if you have questions on how to use them, install them, or whatnot, please read the readme.pdf included in the zip.

If you download these, please comment and tell me what you think! Let me know how you use them and shoot me links to the photos. I’d love to see them in action!

Smiles!

-dustin

To continue with the “From the Archives” series, I wanted to share one of my all-time favorites that I shot of the talented model/actor/singer/dancer, DJ Rouse.

I chose this image because I originally processed it with this not-so-nice, greenish tint that looked kinda funky, but didn’t bring out the full potential of the image. Since it was originally processed poorly, with fresh eyes and my new Lightroom Presets, I saw some potential with this image with the new post-processing. I am very happy with the results.

Session Notes: This was shot in natural light, mid-day, with my trusty old Nikon D70 and my 50mm f/1.4. I shot it in RAW and processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. We had just poured water all over his head with a jug so he had kind of a wet appearance. He was a good sport and went along with it for some pretty cool results. This was re-processed with Steller Lightroom Presets (Gray Craze Warmer).

Here is the original RAW file next to the Gray series preset, Gray Craze Warmer. This is only one of the 52 presets included!

See this image on my Flickr.