I always thought that editing is as much a part of a photographer’s style as his styling and composition, and this is the reason why I never give out my raw files. What I didn’t know was that I was using about 40% of the Lightroom capabilities and that I was creating good work, instead of putting out great work.

A big part of working with Rachel from TwoLovesStudio as part of her mentoring program is to revamp my portfolio and make it more attractive for the clients I want to work with, such as brands and magazines. With her guidance and her wonderful book The Art of Light, I have been able to plan and execute photoshoots to create portfolio images that truly reflect my style and the type of shoots I want to work on. But the revelation for me was Rachel’s Lightroom Magic Masterclass. In this class, she goes through every Lightroom panel in detail, defining each editing tool and how to use it properly, but also explaining what makes a great picture and walking us through her own editing workflow. She showed me how to transform a good picture into a great one with Lightroom editing, and she took out the guesswork (and made editing a moment I now look forward to).

With her help, I was able to take my last portfolio work from this:

To this:

Which is not only a much better image, in line with the quality of the clients I want to attract, it is also much more my style. 

I learned so much from this course, from how to use the histogram and the tone curve, to the difference between highlights and whites, and most importantly how to edit colors to create to pop of colors that will make a great image. 

Incidentally Rachel is relaunching her Lightroom Magic course on October 17th and is including a lot of bonus materials if you sign up through this link between October 17th and October 26th. The free bonus content include: Hacks for Lightroom, Keyword + Metadata for Image Exposure Online, Bonus Editing Process from the community, and Feedback Session: QA + Feedback on your edits. I can only recommend taking this class if want to up your food photography game!

If you are not quite there yet and need some advice on finding the right online food photography course, I suggest you check out my previous post where I share my favorite online food photography classes.

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