Allison Marie Photography | Kansas City Wedding Photographer

I am so honored to be featured on Melissa Jill’s blog today, as an MJ2Day Alumni! I attended her workshop way back in May of 2009, and I got to share all about my experience in an interview on her blog today! Go check it out!

It’s hard to believe it’s been a little over a year since I posted this announcement, that I moved into a public office space in the Briarcliff Village. Now, a year later, I am back to give the update that I moved my office back home! I’ve been at a loss for words to adequately explain why I chose to move my office out of Briarcliff, because it really was a great place for me, and I had a wonderful experience overall. I agonized over the decision for a couple months this fall, making lists upon lists of pro’s and con’s, and finally decided it was the best decision for me and my business to move back into my home office. Two primary reason for this decision:

1. As a small business owner who works on location for jobs (weddings!), it was hard for me to justify paying a large sum each month for rent without significantly raising my prices. I surveyed previous brides, and the feedback I received was that meeting in a public location like Briarcliff did not play a factor in their decision to hire me as their wedding photographer. I believe building genuine relationships with my prospective clients and showing examples of my work are the most important things during that initial meeting..which of course, is not reliant upon the location of that meeting.

2. After a year of working in a very small space (photos here) with no windows nearby, I was craving natural light and fresh air! Until my time in Briarcliff, I had no idea how important to me this really is! Having windows all around me in my home office makes me feel so energized and enthusiastic about the day of work ahead!

There were certainly many other factors that weighed into this decision, but I’d hate to bore you with all the details!Once I moved my office home, I gave the room a fresh coat of paint (it was green) and some curtains, which made a world of difference! Here’s a look into the space:

A big thank you to all my friends, family and clients who supported me and encouraged me during this transition!

Sometimes change is exciting and welcomed, and othertimes it is a difficult transition. A couple months ago, I switched from using Adobe Bridge to Lightroom to edit my raw files, and it was definitely a more challenging transition! I’ve used Adobe Bridge for the last 4 years, so I had developed my system of editing there that worked really well. So why change something that was working for me? Well, I had to upgrade to Photoshop CS6 in order to read my 2nd shooter’s files (she upgraded to the Mark III!), which meant the adjustment sliders in Bridge were all different from what I was used to. I no longer had my well-worn paths of editing to work with, and for a while I felt so lost! Around the same time, I had a couple friends tell me about how amazing Lightroom was…so I decided to give it a shot. It slowed down my editing time quite a bit for the first couple weddings, but once I got used to it, I began agreeing with my friends – it is amazing and I was, indeed, missing out on some really great features!

Before I explain a few reasons why I am loving lightroom over bridge, I will say that this is just my experience and opinion, and both are really great programs that are capable of producing very similar results!

Reasons #1 & 2: Speed and Presets.

Editing in Lightroom has helped me significantly cut down on my editing time. When I used Adobe Bridge, I would do all my basic edits there (color correction and exposure) and then open all the exported jpegs in Photoshop for additional tweaks…which you can imagine took way too long! Now when I edit in lightroom, the presets I have created allow me to achieve a similar look without the extra step of opening all the images in Photoshop. I began with the VSCO Film and MCP lightroom presets, and then tweeked my favorites to match my style. I love that presets apply the adjustments to a photo the same instant I click the preset, compared to the very long time I would have to wait for a single action to run in Photoshop. Here are a few examples of straight-out-of-camera (SOOC) images, and the final image exported from lightroom:

I love the emotion of this next shot. However, when I first opened it, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to use it because it’s so washed out (due to where my couple was in comparison to the sun). I always seek to capture my photos correct in-camera, but I was thrilled to be able to edit this image with the sliders and presets in lightoom to make it use-able.
Also,  I used to have to open all the images I wanted to turn black and white in photoshop, but now I can do that with one click while I am editing an entire wedding. SO much faster, and I love this b&w preset I created in lightroom! Reason #3: Adjustment Brush

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember Bridge having the adjustment brush feature. It simply allows me to make adjustments to a particular area in a photo rather than on the entire imagine. Again, this was something I could do in Photoshop, but it’s much faster in Lightroom and  higher quality, since it’s an adjustment to a raw file rather than a jpeg. Below you can see all the adjustments possible with this brush:

In the photo below, I used a brush on the trees in the background and lowered the exposure to darken them a little to blend in with the exposure of the rest of the image.  For this next image, I used the adjustment brush to lighten the shadow on the bride’s face.
Reason #4: Lens Correction.

Adobe Bridge CS6 does have this feature, but since I used CS4 up until my switch to lightroom, it’s new to me

This feature comes in handy for me when I have a shot with vertical or horizontal lines in the background, like in this next photo. See how that horizontal line is quite distorted? 

With just a quick click, I enabled the lens correction (which accounts for the specific lens I was using and adjust accordingly-brilliant!) and the much of the distortion was removed. It’s not exactly perfect, as you can see below, but I find it to be much less distracting!

Also, speaking of keeping lines straight, I appreciate the grid when I crop an image in lightroom.

Reaason #5: Layout.

I love that in lightroom, I am able to edit all my images when I’m in the “Develop” module (seen at the top right of the screenshot below) without having to select a grouping of images and having opening them in a different window to edit.

Below: Adobe Bridge To edit images in bridge, I select them from the window above, and they open in this edit window as seen below. It’s a small thing, but it’s great to be able to do all the editing in one place without having to select a group and opening them in a different window. It’s all about speed and convenience when editing hundreds of images! Photographers: are you Lightroom or Adobe Bridge fans? What’s your favorite thing about the one you use?