Gavin Seim

May 29, 2023

Photography Podcast, podcast, Pro Photo Show Podcast, special effects

Photography Podcast? Yes Because the Pro Photography Show is back!

Podcasts are perhaps the best way to catch up and tune in. A pure form where you listen on your terms to your favorite topics. After over 7 years of radio silence, Pro Photography Podcast is back.

Pro Photography Podcast

Pro Photography Podcast #211 | The 2024 Year end Gear Show

00:00 / 1:31:30

The listing should be live in most podcast apps. But there’s direct links to subscribe and episode archives here on the podcast page

When I make a video on my YouTube channel the demands are high to cut tight and stand out. It’s hard to keep people watching and we always have to work for that goal to get views. In a podcast we can discover more about a topic.

A podcast is more like a talk show than a YouTube hit.

Almost everything for me started with the Pro Photo Podcast back in 2006. There were very few good photo podcasts then and my first episodes were not so good either. But they improved and my growing up and career was all in that podcast.

PPS had a good run and tons of great guests and co-hosts that I miss. It transformed changed my career and my understanding of photography at a time when everything was changing for all of us. I was told by many that it helped them become the photographers they wanted to be.

What happened to Pro Photo Show 1.0

Pro Photo Show started before Facebook was the thing. We had forums and contests and shows every week. It was a lot of work and very rewarding.

Then I started doing more YT videos and traveling. Life and even my human right activism absorbed my time and made wore me out. Then some of my regulars didn’t want to co-cost anymore and I was feeling beat down. At episode 100, PPS quietly faded into silence. I’ve missed it ever since and honestly felt a little sense of failure for not keeping it going.

In these past 7 years I earned my Master of Photography, I’ve improved in every way, worked tirelessly on growing my YouTube channel and even moved across the world. (Well the continent at least). And while life will always get in the way, my passion for photography has only grown and my abilities improved.

I’ve always been someone who was candid and spoke my mind even if I don’t fit in. Living in Mexico learning a new language, absorbing a new culture and world. It’s all taught me to never give up and that the beautiful light never stop.

The world of Photography has changed again.

Right now mobiles are at new levels. And Ai revolution is happening and standing out as a pro photographers is harder then ever. A good time to come back to a pure form of Photography d8icvssion with a photography podcast for profession and enthusiast photographers.

I’ve been busy and a bit intimated to make a Photography Podcast again because I know I have to make it good to keep up in these times. But after years of editing video, I found the process and simplicity of an audio podcast a pleasure. There’s something about just audio.

Talk about improving photography in the new Pro Photography podcast

The new photography podcast plan.

I’ll have solo episode, panels, and guest. To start with a show every two weeks but maybe every week soon. I’m wanting your feedback on what kind of shows you want, but I have no many thinkings oppponing into my head and make more sense here than in a video. That said some shows will be recorded LIVE on my channel so make sure you subscribe.

Pro Photography Podcast will be our place for relaxed conversations about how to create better and sell more. And it will be backed my visual content that I create on my YouTube channel. Together we’re going to improve photography.

I’m Gavin Seim and I’m Glad you’re here for the Pro Photography Podcast.

May 26, 2023

Film Presets for Lightroom, lightroom, special effects

Lightroom Running Slow, I tried every tip to make it FAST and I did!

Yes Lightroom needs every ounce of power. But when you have Lightroom running slow, your work slows down and drives you crazy.

In todays video we STOP letting lightroom RUN slow and make it FAST

I actually got fed up after last weeks video about Speed-Masks. I love Ai masking in LR but it was bringing my good system to a crawl. I decided it was time to review everything and make a video.

Check out Filmist and Elegance 4.5 Speed-Mask update that was mentioned briefly in the video.

Making Lightroom fast in 3 steps.

This 2023 video is everything relevant I could find to make Lightroom fast and it goes well beyond the basic Lightroom preference panel settings that you tweak when Lightroom is Slow.

This video has 3 segments. The first is the basics inside LR, then the factors outside of Lightroom and finally Advanced tips for your system to make it speedy.

Lightroom running slow? Make lightroom run faster

Lightroom is a log, accept that and make it fast!

Lightroom has always been a big of a hog. Lt likes lots of Ram, disk speed and now graphics. The Masking is epically heavy on graphics use so make sure you watch the external lightroom speed tips in the video because they really help.

Many if these will improve speed on other apps as well. So if you find Capture One is slow or you video editing app, many of the things I’ll share with you today still apply.

Check in with preferences first and often if you feel things are slowing down. We’ll cover those tips in the video. But don’t stop there, do the more advanced things to really make your Lightroom run faster.

I hope this helped you speed up Lightroom as much as it did for me. – Gavin Seim

May 19, 2023

lightroom, special effects

Speed Masking in Lightroom makes your masking 10x better.

If you’re not using my Elegance Speed-Masks and don’t want to, then you need to make your own. So I’ll show you. This is the only way you should be masking in Lightroom. You get better masks about 10x faster. I mean that 100%!

In today video I’ll show you how to make your own Speed Mask presets and the latest update to my own local adjustments preset pack, Elegance 4.

Lightroom’s powerful masking tools can be slow and cumbersome. But now with Speed Masks

You can get the Elegance 4.5 presets here. And if you already have Elegance 4, this is a free update so l ogin and grab it.

Control what you want.

Masking in Lightroom takes a lot of forms and sometimes it transforms everything while others it’s as simple as controlling tone in a sky.

IN this case I use Street’ist presets for the main look and just dialed back the sky using an Ai speed preset. INtersecting grads into you Ai sky selections like I do in Elegance 4.5 makes thenm more natural.

Control 10 layers at a time.

As I showed in the video with this we had all these layers and by using them as a Speed-Mask develop preset you’ll be able top adjust them as one turning the effect intensity up or down. This is a huge control boost for masks in general that most people don’t even know they are missing if they don’t use the Speed Mask presets.

Don’t go too far with masks.

No matter what app you edit with, going too far on a masked edit is the sure fire way to make a photo look fake. In in a time when Ai is creating fakes of everything, I think natural is a good thing.

You should isolate your background but that doe snot mean darken it two stop. Remember Masking is to digital what burning and dodging was in the darkroom. use it wisely.

You can see in this wedding photo how we used the Ai masks but more for atmosphere than to isolate one thing. The mix allows us to us the master slide to decide how far we wanted that to go.

Have fun with these and let me know what you think – Gav

May 12, 2023

free lightroom presets, lightroom, street photography

I was planning a quick how-to use Streetist presets video. I made this instead.

So today’s vlog is for you even if you use either editing tools. Because today I want to share my ESS theory. What I’ve learned in the process has changed how I create photos in a fake Ai world.

No matter how you edit, your street process matters a lot.

So today after over 3 years of pushing hard on my street photography here in Mexico, I want to share how that’s changed the theories of a guy who’s been a pro photographer for over 20 years. I’ll show you how to use my new Street’ist street photography presets. But I’ll also show you ESS.

Get my Street’ist presets here. Or get a free pack of my film presets here.

Thinking from start to finish.

The key is to know have a simple plan like ESS. Only you know what you are feeling and how you want to share that in a street photo. But with this simple process you start to focus on what really matters in a street photo.

Sure editing tools and tone and using lightroom presets or capture one styles to make you more creative and make you try more ideas are important.

But YOUR process is the most important. Just make sure you’re always asking yourself how you can improve your process and how you cam make it more ESS.

What makes your street photography have style?

Should you shoot black and white or color. Should you use the blue and orange tones or go natural. And and no, Tik Tockers didn’t invent that look.

The truth is that is you focus on ESS and how it can make your process better you will find your editing style. As a long time purist myself however I would encourage you to not get too focused on perfection. On only natural tones or colors.

Great street photographer have always pushed the edge of edits and presentation and shadow. That’s because a great street photographer knows that he’s not just taking a photo. Though we are journalists in a way, the purity of a scene is sometimes less critical than telling your story about what you feel with light, color, shadow and motion.

May 10, 2023

free lightroom presets, lightroom vs capture one

Giving a Real World beating to the new Ai Noise tool of Lightroom 2023

Everyone is saying Ai these days. It’s the marketing gimmick. But Adobe is showing that when they say Ai, they mean tools that are actually smart. Like the Ai masks from last year made even better in 2023.

But what about Lightroom’s new Ai Noise reduction?

In today’s video I’ll show you how to use it and give it punishing comparison tests. Lightroom already beat Capture One in my Lightroom vs Capture one Noise and Worms testing. But for photos you need something extra on. This new button is more amazing than I expected. I’ll show you in the video below.

You can get the new Street’ist presets I mentioned in todays video. And you can also download the Free Filmist presets pack to see the grain technique in action. They work perfect to finish up after Ai noise reduction.

At this point we have to start asking how much noise even matters.

The early days if digital left us with lots of noise and artifacts that recent Noise tools and better sensors have mostly brought it up to the detail level that we had in film.

With the improvement this year from Ai noise tools like this, you have to ask how much ISO and noise even matters. You can clean it up so well it’s almost too clean, and adding in a little organic grain like I do in most of my edits is more important than ever.

Old RAw file with ultra high noise corrected by Lightroom Ai

Even on this old 5D MK2 file at ISO 25000, Lightrooms Ai noise using the settings I show in the video completely transformed it like no noise tool I’ve ever used.

ON this S21 Ultra RAW file there was not much noise but the Lightroom Ai Noise process still improved the detail in a way that amazing me. I’ll show you the side by side in the video.

This is the start of big changes in how we edit.

I predict that very soon these Ai editing tools will nor be long processing steps but just part of the system like any other slider. They will keep getting better and as photographer we need to focus on the value of using them but also keeping photos real.

In the end I think this tool is game changing and I hope we see more Ai tool’s make make our real images better rather than a focus on Ai tools making photos that are not real photos.\

Gavin Seim

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