Lesson 7 describes how to grow in your photographic abilities by looking other peoples work and trying to puzzle out how they accomplished different things in their photos and then trying to recreate these techniques. It is OK to make mistakes and even perhaps finding new techniques in these failures. Here he presents an image he created and challenges you to figure it out. He also processes more images and this time describing additional add-on products to enhance your images. Q & A talks about processing batches in Lightroom and putting a Nikon lens on a Canon body.
Lesson 8 starts off with talking about eustress and how this is the good kind of stress – as opposed to distress, but by sharing your work - even if you are not sure of its quality, this good stress helps you grow in your confidence. He does three more images in post-processing using various lighting conditions and situations. Q & A now takes a look at what Lightroom is used for, how to backup images, and color correction after processing in Photomatix.
Lesson 9 finishes with how the image that he presented in lesson 7 was created. This discussion makes you examine how lenses work as well as how other things within the image were considered when creating it. Then he goes into working more images and now using more advanced techniques. In the Q & A session there are a lot more questions including why does the instructor use Adobe Bridge in his workflow, how he uses catalogs and keywords in Lightroom, and why he uses layers instead of the Dodge tool.
Trey Ratcliff's Photography, HDR, and Post-Processing Course is really the first course that I have seen that fully engages you within the full realm of HDR processing. Tagging in at over 11 hours there is a lot of information here. Granted, there is a lot of philosophic overview to photography in general, but there is also a whole lot of processing of images. In many ways it is like hanging out with the instructor over the course of nine days with the non-processing time proving to be as much value as the processing.
Where I think that Trey Ratcliff's Photography, HDR, and Post-Processing Course scores the biggest win is the fact that this is not a pre-planned demonstration. He took 130 raw files that cover more than 25 images and processes them on the spot for the first time while you watch him do it, hear his thought processes, and sometimes see his mistakes.
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