New Video Course! Mastering Light & Shadow In Lightroom

LightroomProduct
Written by Scott Davenport
Mastering Light & Shadow In Lightroom
Mastering Light & Shadow In Lightroom
$69.95

Shape The Light – Tell Your Story

Light shapes your story, and Lightroom gives you the tools to mold it. In Mastering Light & Shadow, we’ll dive into how to read the light in your photos, control it with intention, and shape it to match the story you want to tell. You’ll walk away with practical techniques, clear workflows, and the confidence to interpret your photos and bring your creative vision to life.

Unlock the power of light in every photo you edit. Mastering Light & Shadow in Lightroom teaches you how to read the light in your images, control it with Lightroom’s full set of masking and tonal tools, and apply proven “recipes” to craft mood, depth, and story. If you’re ready to shape the light and tell your story with intention, this course gives you everything you need — start to finish — to make it happen.

I’ve been building this course for the better part of a year—carefully refining the flow so the fundamentals are solid and every advanced topic builds naturally on top of that foundation. It’s been a true passion project, and I’m very excited to finally share it with you. I created Mastering Light & Shadow in Lightroom so you can approach every edit with confidence, shape the light with intention, and tell the story you saw when you pressed the shutter.

I could go on and on about what’s inside this course, but I’ll keep it simple — head over to the product page. You’ll find all the details on what the course covers, how it’s organized, and a full FAQ so you know exactly what you’re getting before you dive in.

Learn more
You Might Also Enjoy These Lightroom Posts
A Keyword Strategy That Doesn't Become a Second Job
A Keyword Strategy That Doesn't Become a Second Job

Keywording can make photographs easier to find, but it can also become an endless exercise in describing everything visible in every frame. You can keep the work manageable by asking one question: could Lightroom already find this photograph without the keyword?

The most useful keywords add information you cannot recover from capture data, ratings, location fields, or other existing metadata. That may be a subject, a familiar place name, a mood, a dominant color, or another idea you expect to search for later. The goal isn't to build the largest vocabulary possible. It is to add metadata that earns its keep.

Read more →
Add Location Information Before You Forget Where You Were
Add Location Information Before You Forget Where You Were

Right after a shoot, you know where you made the photographs. A few years later, that may not be nearly as obvious. Adding location information while the shoot is still fresh gives you another durable way to find photographs and understand where they were made.

You don't need to type city, state, and country into every photograph. If the camera records GPS coordinates, much of the work is already done. A GPX track log or, when necessary, Lightroom Classic's Map module provides other ways to add the location. The goal isn't exhaustive geographic metadata. It's enough useful information that you won't have to reconstruct it later.

Read more →
Use Lightroom Stacks to Organize Similar Photos and Exposure Sets
Use Lightroom Stacks to Organize Similar Photos and Exposure Sets

A group of photographs can belong together without every frame needing equal space in Lightroom Classic. Several variations of the same composition, panorama segments, exposure brackets, or a rapid burst can quickly fill Grid view with photographs you don't need to see individually all the time.

Stacks keep those related photographs together while letting one useful photograph represent the group. I use them so the other photographs remain available when I need them without adding unnecessary visual clutter to my catalog.

Read more →
A Lightroom Star-Rating System You Can Use Consistently
A Lightroom Star-Rating System You Can Use Consistently

Lightroom Classic gives you five stars for rating photographs, but those stars aren't very useful if their meanings change from one shoot to another. A consistent system lets you know what a three-star or four-star photograph means without rethinking the definitions every time you rate a new group of photos.

My rating system ranges from photographs I keep primarily for sentimental reasons to photographs I consider strong enough to print. You don't need to use the same definitions I do. The important part is giving your ratings stable meanings you can apply consistently over time.

Read more →
Build a Lightroom Import Preset That Does the Repetitive Work for You
Build a Lightroom Import Preset That Does the Repetitive Work for You

Lightroom Classic's Import dialog asks many of the same questions every time you bring in photos. Rather than rebuilding those settings for every import, you can save the choices that stay consistent in an import preset.

The preset doesn't eliminate the decisions that change from shoot to shoot. It gives you a reliable starting point, so you can concentrate on the source, destination, and other details that actually need your attention.

Read more →
What Copy, Move, and Add Actually Mean When Importing Into Lightroom
What Copy, Move, and Add Actually Mean When Importing Into Lightroom

Lightroom Classic's Import dialog presents plenty of choices, but one of the most important decisions is straightforward: where are your photos now, and where do you want the original files to live after the import?

Copy, Move, and Add each handle the original files differently. Once you understand what happens to the physical files and what happens in the Lightroom catalog, choosing the right import method becomes much easier.

Read more →
Create Depth in Lightroom with Duplicate and Invert
Create Depth in Lightroom with Duplicate and Invert

A complicated subject can take a little work to mask well. Once you've made that selection, what else can you do with it? Quite a bit, especially when you want to give your subject more separation from a busy background.

Using a mossy tree as an example, I explain how Lightroom's Duplicate and Invert lets you build several adjustments from one refined mask. You can shape the background and guide the eye while protecting the light on your foreground subject.

Read more →
My Six-Step Lightroom Workflow From Import to Sharing
My Six-Step Lightroom Workflow From Import to Sharing

A photo workflow can fall apart when you cannot tell what has been finished and what still needs attention. That becomes especially frustrating when photographs from the same shoot are at different stages.

My six-step Lightroom Classic workflow uses color labels to give every photograph a clear next action. Whether a photo needs rating, location information, keywords, developing, or sharing, I can see where I left off and continue without retracing my steps.

Read more →
Smart Collections: Let Lightroom Organize Photos for You
Smart Collections: Let Lightroom Organize Photos for You

A regular Collection lets you choose which photographs you want to see together. A Smart Collection works differently. You describe the photographs using criteria such as ratings, keywords, location information, or camera metadata, and Lightroom Classic gathers the photographs that match.

The real advantage is that the group isn't static. As photographs enter the catalog or their metadata changes, they can automatically appear in or disappear from a Smart Collection. The rules keep working as the catalog changes.

Read more →
Lightroom Folders and Collections Solve Different Problems
Lightroom Folders and Collections Solve Different Problems

Folders and Collections can both look like ways to organize photographs in Lightroom Classic, but they solve different problems. Folders describe where the original photographs physically live. Collections let you bring photographs together without changing that physical organization.

That becomes especially useful when a gallery, project, subject, or other body of work includes photographs stored in many different folders. Collections give you another way to see those photographs together while leaving the originals exactly where they belong.

Read more →
Scott Davenport

Scott Davenport is a landscape photographer and photo educator and based in San Diego, California. He leads photo workshops, writes photo books, hosts podcasts, makes tutorial videos, and feels weird referring to himself in the 3rd person.

He also can't help getting his feet wet photographing at the beach.

https://scottdavenportphoto.com
Previous

Balancing Light In A Backlit Sunset
Next

From Flat to Powerful: Editing A Backlit Tree Photo