Posted by & filed under Travel Photography.

I’ve been a professional photographer for… well… let’s forget about the number of years and just say I’ve shot on film. Back then, when you had just 36 exposures available before you needed to reload, you had to make sure you had the perfect lighting and composition before taking a shot. Editing in the lab got really expensive, really fast.

I still try my hardest to get the very best images possible out of my camera, but shooting digital has opened a vast array of processing options to enhance and fine-tune my photographs…and they’ll help your images come to life too (if you learn to use them correctly).

I’ve been using Lightroom for years, and I love how it helps me match the image on the screen to the one in my mind.

Here are a couple of before-and-after shots using this software:

I shot this Cape buffalo in Tanzania. I got the composition right in the original, so I didn’t need to correct that in Lightroom. However, overall the original is a bit dark, and the Cape buffalo has more than his fair share of bugs! Lightroom helped me fix both of those issues.

Here it is now:

Here’s another shot from the same safari, this time of a family of elephants walking across the Serengeti: 

Again, I didn’t need to change the composition. (I really hate cropping and throwing away those pixels, so I try to get it right when I push the shutter button.) This is a nice image, but it’s dull and flat. The textures in the elephants’ rough hide are hidden, and the colors are drab.  

A few simple corrections in Lightroom turned it into an image that has been sold several times as fine art:

Lightroom is a very powerful and useful tool for anyone who wants to make money with their photography, but it is vitally important to learn how to use it from an expert so you can fully exploit its power as efficiently as possible.

I had the chance to do just that when I bought Bonnie Caton’s Lightroom Mastery course. It helped me improve my skills, and it will help you as well—no matter what level of experience you have when you begin the course. 

In particular, Bonnie’s course helped me become more efficient in Lightroom—I had a workflow that I had developed by trial and error, but I often wondered if there was a better way, or if there were “power user” tips that would help me transform my workflow and create better photographs (and make more money). 

Whether or not you decide to take the Lightroom Mastery course, I think you’ll find that this software can help you get the perfect shot. It’s certainly a lot easier and more cost-effective than it was back in the old days with 36-exposure film!

[Editor’s Note: Learn more about how you can fund your travels and make an extra income with photography, travel writing, blogging, and more in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel. Sign up here today and we’ll send you a new report, Three Fun Ways To Get Paid To Travel: A Quick-Start Guide, completely FREE.]