#04 Editing Is Boring

The creatives dilemma

“Mastery requires lots of practice. But the more you practice something, the more boring and routine it becomes.” — James Clear

Welcome to issue #4 of the newsletter. Today is a very special day for me; after months of work, I’m finally ready to relaunch Strohl Works. So, I’m focusing today’s issue on what I’ve been up to. In short, I’ve been secretly working on this new product aimed at alleviating the huge headache that editing is for photographers. More on it below; or if you don’t have time right now, you can head straight to Strohl Works.

The Creatives Dillema

Having spent the past decade of my life working on a few hundred shoots, collaborating with thousands of creatives (photographers, designers, filmmakers...), I’m always trying to understand the hardest parts of our profession. Obviously, what comes up first is the nature of the job: it's very fun but very unsteady. Ups and downs, valleys and peaks... Your future often lies outside of your control, and your life is subject to 'feast' or 'famine' periods. Luckily, I have been blessed with steady work since the beginning of my career, but one thing is for sure: you always need to have multiple irons in the fire because a lot of 'exciting projects' never pan out. Clients go 'different directions,' and you’re often left full of disillusion if you’re not expecting it.

But to me, there’s another worry. That is to keep the work interesting. To have things to look forward to when you finish breakfast and you’re heading into the editing bay to sift through 24 million RAWs from your last shoot.

The thing is, I love being out in the field, most of us do, but there comes a day when you either hand your RAWs to an editor after each shoot, or you go completely bananas trying to edit yourself. The problem with the former plan is that you lose some of your signature as a photographer, and the latter is that… well… you’ve gone mad. We can then agree that both outcomes aren’t what we’re looking for.

All of this takes me to Strohl Works' mission which is to make the photography process enjoyable.

I don’t like to spend time editing my photos. I loathe it. I’d rather be out shooting. I’ve spent my whole career trying to make editing more fun, and I think I finally got there.

So I made a thing. It’s a pack of my best Lightroom Presets. I called it: AS1 Essentials and the best part is that if you order them before July 5, you score them at 20% off. The kicker is that you also get the GOLD 200 Pack included for free. After July 5, it will be gone.

Check out my presets: AS1 Essential Lightroom Preset Pack

"To be honest, I built these for myself first. I needed a way to produce timeless edits quickly, without excessive copying and pasting of styles in Lightroom. They had to be effective yet subtle and adaptable across a hundred different conditions, suitable for both personal and commercial work.

This humble LR preset pack is a reflection of my commitment to our photography community, and I'm fully aware there are many out there—some great, and some not so great. What sets these apart are: 1. the extensive amount of testing conducted to ensure their robustness, and 2. the empathy for the user. Most of you will be amazed by the results of one-click edits with AS1."

The Goods:

1. AS1 Essentials is 25 presets with variations: Dehaze, high contrast, HC+, Low contrast, LC-, White Balance, Cool, Warm, Underexposed, High Key.

2. A 17mn video where I walk you through how I use the presets - as an OG subscriber you get access to the private video either way: Watch Here

3. Years of refining my editing and distilling it into these presets. I say that jokingly, but it really is a lot of work.

4. Hundreds of hours of testing the presets on every imaginable scenario: mountains, snow, blue hour, ocean, jungle, sunrise, sunset, mid-day, commercial work...

5. Also, making sure these presets work on most camera sensors with minimal tweaks took a substantial amount of time and costs because we had to rent all these other cameras to test.

Overall, I’m incredibly proud to be putting these in front of you today. I have been using these for years and am convinced you will too.

Alright, enough talking, let me show you what they do!

90% of the images you’re about to see are one-click edits with AS1. The remaining 10% I had to adjust white balance or exposure or contrast to correct or emphasize decisions made in the field. Enjoy.

Thanks for watching! Make sure to snag AS1 Essentials Pack before July 5th so you get GOLD 200 (8 variations) free.

Watching

The Day I Met The Omelette GOD (Jacques Pépin) on YouTube

Listening

Echo Saw You by Kaleida on Spotify

My Summer 24 Playlist on Spotify

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Badjaos in Northern Borneo. From “Nomads of The Sea” by Pierre De Valombreuse

Pierre De Valombreuse’s work