I am over here wading through immense amounts of information related to both artificial light and Photoshop. I don't understand flash, either conceptually or functionally. I am gathering information about flash and studio lighting from several sources, and then trying to figure out what to buy that would work for product photography, real estate photography, and some portraits (maybe only of my own kids, but who knows at this point?). I am hoping a year from now I look back on this time from a place of photographic competence. It is similar to my feelings regarding Photoshop, or deleting photos and cleaning up my Lightroom catalog. I am pretty sure every year, at least, I post about how I am really going to start culling, for real, really, I will. And I never do. And the number of attempts at learning PS... yikes. Many. So I know my declarations and intentions are kind of worthless. I have figured out that the key to learning PS and getting it to stick is to incorporate it into my workflow more often. I take a class, then after the class I don't use it or apply what I have learned to my own photos, and then I lose the tenuous grasp I had on the information in the first place. Pretty much the same with flash- I think I will understand it once I do it. Culling- no clue how to get that problem under control. For now I guess my solution is buying a very large external hard drive. And working towards taking fewer photos in the first place. This week in photos- probably a little dicey. It has been stormy and rainy all week. And last week I inspired myself with my blog post about spending more time on studying and less time on taking new photos and editing those photos. As a result, I have tried to just shoot once and be done for the day, and to spend more time on reading and photography videos and less on editing. Here they are...