DAM!

Peter Krough's 2005 version of "The DAM Book"

Not damn, but DAM, as in digital asset management. From the early years during the transition to digital I was fortunate to work around a lot of smart people who really understood workflow and asset management, and even today, I still take pride in my digital workflows even though my asset management could use a bit of refinement.

I bring this up because I was watching TWIT Photo and the guest was Peter Krough who literally wrote "The DAM Book." I didn't recognize the name immediately and actually put off watching the episode for a few days. When I finally got around to watching and realized he was the author (I really only needed to look over at my book shelf to see the 2005 version), I started to pay closer attention.

However, instead of learning more about DAM, like so many photographers today, Peter's willingness to share all kinds of information via his blog and through sites like dpbestflow.org and shutha.org is what had me paying close attention. The Lightroom tutorial on shutha.org is simply amazing and the first time I began to understand the library module and how asset management works within this program. So many tutorials I've watched skipped over this part and spent most of the time in the develop module, so it was refreshing to hear someone go into such depth on what for me was the real barrier to using Lightroom.

I love learning new things and challenging myself to change, even when what I've been doing still works. And even if most of what I do daily can be accomplished in previous software versions of Photoshop and Lightroom, it sure is easier and faster to get great results in the newest versions.

Check out Peter's site and the other sites mentioned above, but most of all, get off you DAM ass!