Hey guys.

I’ve decided I finally want to use my photography to open a website and create a career selling prints and doing events/portraits, maybe eventually teaching workshops and/or making videos. I’ve been shooting for 10 years and I’m having a personal crisis in that I think I’m plateauing in my photographic skills. I’ve used Lightroom 5 for 6 years because I didn’t want to subscribe to Adobe and also because I resent that images are so heavily photoshopped that “professional” results feel so fake.

I’m conceding that I now need photoshop to take my pictures to the next level. I have never focus or exposure stacked images, and I have never added all the pretty little atmosphere effects that the guys with 100k+ followers have. I feel like my images just don't compare quality wise and I’m ready to work harder and learn more to get truly crisp and stunning images.

Pic related is recent and indicative of my current processing skill. I feel like it’s just not nearly as good as some as some other shooters. I’ll post some images of what I want to achieve.