Mentoring

 

Leslie with Mannie Garcia,            Award winning Freelance PhotoJournalist, July 2016

 

Mentoring is like an old Buddhist proverb that goes something like this; “If you light a lamp for someone, it will also brighten your own path.”  Mentoring in general, is the opportunity to meet and work side-by-side with, and perhaps become friends with an expert person in a specific field, and learn from them.

I’ve been very fortunate and am extremely grateful to have been mentored by a few of these gurus. They are three people that I tremendously respect, who are not only experts in their fields, but they are also my friends. I meet with them at different time intervals as schedules permit, but I try to meet monthly with each of them at the very least. These mentor relationships have changed my life in so many positive ways, and because of that, I’ve been propelled to a higher expectation from myself and my photography.

These wonderful friends all have different approaches to how they mentor me. I would describe one as a “guide” or accompanier/harvester. This one takes an active part in mentoring me side-by-side, and then we focus on awareness of what was learned. Mentor #2 is more like a “stimulator”. He escalates the learning and provokes me into a new way of seeing both through my lens and through photography in general. He also, when necessary, shows by example to make something more understandable. He can be tough too, but that’s OK, sometimes I need tough to help stimulate me. My #3 mentor is somewhat like a farmer that “sows” tidbits of life and art. This person freely shares knowledge and trusts that when the skill or shared lesson is needed, the teachings will be there to draw upon.

Recently when discussing my writing this blog topic with one of my mentor friends, I was challenged to write instead about being a mentor myself. This gave me pause to ponder, and that’s when I was struck with the realization that I too was becoming a mentor. Each time I meet with other photographer friends where I sincerely share and engage in conversations about photography life challenges, skills and talent, I am being a mentor with regards to the things I share with them. What has been shared with me I now am sharing with others. And that, is exactly the way mentoring is supposed to work. Could there be a greater gift than to be the giver or receiver of such unsolicited good will? This pay it forward philosophy has been rooted for a very long time, and many mentors believe that it’s much more joyful to give than receive!

Light and Love, Leslie

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”  Buddha

Mannie Garcia at work photographing “The Riverlands” art installation. Sept. 2016
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Photoshop CC

Madison County, Illinois Barn

I have been using Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription service for Lightroom and Photoshop, etc., for my workflow for awhile now. This past week I had noticed that at the subscription login prompt, there were pending updates waiting to download.  I was in a hurry, and thinking it was in my best interest, I proceeded with the updates, and moved on with my life. On Saturday evening I discovered that my workflow processes was disrupted, broken is actually a better description. After a few encounters with the error message; “The command camera raw filter is currently not available”, I searched the internet for clues to what was happening.

I use a lot of “focus stacking” and “bracketing” techniques in my photography, and during such- set my “mode” to 32 bit, then proceed to “tone in ACR”. This normally initiates ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) for that particular 32 bit “smart object”.  Suddenly though, after these updates, it seems that ACR will no longer function with 32 bit images.

My internet search for answers only helped me in so much as I now know that it is an issue that other photographers are also having. I was also able to find that an Adobe staffer named Brett N did confirm on April 12, 2017 at 4:36PM- “We’ve confirmed this behavior on our end. This has been reported to the engineering team for repair in a future release.”  https://forums.adobe.com/thread

At this point in time, there is no more information forthcoming from Adobe. There has also been no mention of when the “future release” date might be. Apparently this is the second time this has occurred in as many years. I would highly urge photographers who use Photoshop for “Focus Stacking”, “Bracketing”, or “HDR”, to avoid the current updates (17.1.0), and stay firm with the functioning 17.0.1 edition until the problems are resolved. I unfortunately learned this too late!

Until the next update-

Light and Love, Leslie- Out Chasing Light

St. Louis Cnty, MO, Old Farm

 

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