So it's been a week since I got back from NYC and PPE. This is a belated entry because I came back elated but exhausted. It didn't help that it was minus 5 C and snowing here in our home...

It's been a full day here at the granddaddy of all photo shows, Photokina, held every two years in Cologne, Germany. The day started with a nice surprise: A double page spread in the Photokina Show Daily.pdf on the Adobe...

A couple weeks ago, at the Adobe summer school here in Europe I hinted that Lightroom Beta 2 users would be pleasantly surprised at some of the new features coming out in Lightroom 2. Well... LR 2 is now out...

I'm holed up in hotel in Amsterdam, madly trying to finish the book based on the Lightroom Tasmania Adventure. Working with the images from Tasmania has been absolutely awesome. Great stuff. And Lightroom? Well, it's awesome too. (I'm also on...

As many of you know, one of the key sponsors of the Adobe Adventure to Tasmania is Digital Railroad, the online photo marketing system for professional photographers and stock photo agencies. Digital Railroad is where many of our photographers have chosen to present and market their work. This week our very own Jeff Pflueger is featured in Digital Railroad's marketplace. Good job Jeff, and thank you Digital Railroad! Next week Digital Railroad will feature Catherine Hall's photos of Tasmania.

There are just two weeks left for a chance to win free trip onboard Qantas airlines to Tasmania! Sign up here. All of you who followed the Adobe Lightroom Adventure on the O’Reilly site know what a treasure Tasmania is. It’s photographers and travelers’ paradise and the Adventure team all came back thinking we had just been on a trip of a lifetime.

As many of you know, one of the key sponsors of the Adobe Adventure to Tasmania is Digital Railroad, the online photo marketing system for professional photographers and stock photo agencies. Digital Railroad is where many of our photographers have chosen to present and market their work. This week our very own Angela Drury is featured in Digital Railroad's marketplace Member Showcase. They are featuring her fantastic images from Tasmania, and also many of the shots Angela took on the Adobe Adventure to Iceland two summers ago. We are told that Angela has already sold some of her work. Good job Angela, and thank you Digital Railroad! Next week Digital Railroad will feature Jeff Pflueger's photos of Tasmania.

I've worked through some portraits I took on location and made a Lightroom gallery. I really smiled a lot as I went through these photos , and thought about what a wonderful bunch of creative, collaborative people Mikkel put together....

I've been playing with the Lightroom 2 public beta (free here) and finding some things I really like. Take the new Clarity, for example. Clarity controls are found under the Basic pane in the right panel of the Develop module. Traditionally, Lightroom's Clarity has been used for local contrast enhancement and gives dull images a "punch". With Lightroom 2, Clarity can have a reserve effect, a negative Clarity if you will. Negative values, (up to -100) when applied to a photo of, say, a face can give skin a smooth silky look (You can use reverse Clarity with the new localized adjustment tool as well). I was curious how negative Clarity might work on some of my Tasmanian landscapes and I was pleasantly surprised. Tasmania already has a romantic feel to it, but this simple adjustment really brought out the romantic quality even more, as you can see by looking at my Romantic Tasmania web gallery. I've also prepared a simple video that walks you through what I did using the public beta on one of the images. I'll post that shortly.

As a team member in Tasmania, trying to follow the activities of 24 photographers shooting over ten days could make one downright mad. One was likely to just get the crazy stories in bits and pieces - or hope to see an image or two. But of all of the photographers, what Bruce Dale was up to each day was the most mysterious to me. Bruce, long time national Geographic staff photographer (30 plus years I understand!), would dissolve each day into the Tasmanian landscape, to return at night with an impressive breadth of subjects. Not only did Bruce have stunning landscape images, but also intimate and rich visual stories of the people of Tasmania: A pirate wedding Bruce was invited to for example, or the slaughter of a pig - subjects only obtainable to photographers with the master key to all of the proverbial doors a photojournalist might want to enter! Bruce has put together a Lightroom gallery showing a bit of what he was up to in Tasmania, and it is stunning to say the least. The gallery shows off a bit of the photographic and journalistic skills a rich and full career at National Geographic can cultivate. You need to check it out! After seeing the gallery, I even more sorely regret not trying to tag along with Bruce like young grasshopper on one of his deep Tasmania day missions to learn what I could!