I have been doing so little photography lately. Winter in southern New Hampshire has been pretty pathetic so far, and we’ve been busy putting time and energy into other things. I really wish I could work a full time job that is only four days a week.
I did manage to create a new Lightroom preset I’ve been enjoying. Dark Matter is a high contrast matte black and white preset with heavy vignetting. It works really well for darker colored subjects on a light background (ie: Winston). I built in some exposure compensation, so its also ideal for scenes that are overall dark where you want your subject (more or less towards the center of the frame) to stand out.




I’ve really become a fan of presets as a way to expedite my editing and post processing. I tend not to use them very much on nature images, but for portraits they can be super helpful in helping me decide which direction to go with processing. If I’m shooting assignments or otherwise in a situation where I need to bulk edit a lot of images at once and want them to have a consistent feel, presets are huge time savers.
Photography is no longer my livelihood, but I always consider it a fallback skill if I ever become miserable with my work or we need to relocate and I can’t secure a job in my professional field right away. After focusing much of my photography career on nature and sports photography I’ve learned that those are really difficult genres of photography to make money in, and I could see myself gravitating towards a career as a pet photographer or maybe even photographing couples and weddings (gasp) in the future. Should I ever go that route, I think presets will become a valuable part of my work.