This past week, the University of Maryland (UMD) Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) had the pleasure of hosting guest speaker Javier Fernández Dussaq. Fernández Dussaq is a Guatemala native who graduated from Louisiana State University (LSU) in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing and a minor in photography. He currently works as the lead Team Photographer for the American professional soccer club D.C. United. With his strong artistic vision and camera lens, he is able to capture images that highlight the different personalities and skill sets of individual players.
This past week, Fernández Dussaq was able to reflect on his past professional experiences after working for D.C. United for almost two years. He described the importance of staying consistent with marketing strategies and also showed students examples of other photographers who know how to develop their brands by creating content and presets with Adobe Creative Cloud.
Students watched attentively as Fernández Dussaq experimented with different settings on Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop while discussing the advantages and disadvantages of both platforms. Most notably, Lightroom keeps track of the initial image which helps editors to separate their alterations from the original file; an entire list of your changes and alterations can be found under the ‘history’ tab. Alterntively, Photoshop will permanently alter images because adjustments are automatically condensed and saved as one file. When users save images in Photoshop, they have to make sure that they save their edits under a different name, otherwise, their edits will be saved on top of the original image. Adobe Creative Cloud beginners would be best off using Lightroom because it allows users to undo their changes, enabling them to make creative adjustments without restriction.
Fernández Dussaq encouraged students to be creative with their settings but to also be conservative with their use of different features because natural edits looks the most professional. Individual style will help users to determine the adjustments that they will to an image, for instance, Fernández Dussaq likes to draw a focus in on the subjects of his images by cropping where the action takes place. More advanced users can also adjust the levels of exposure to lighten or darken an image or create vibrancy by increasing the levels of saturation. Fernández Dussaq applied sharpening tools to accentuate the texture of the fabric on a player’s jersey and demonstrated how clarity can be adjusted to magnify shadows and rehaze can be adjusted to increase contrast.
In the midst of editing, Fernández Dussaq explained that another advantage to using Lightroom is that users can export presets onto their personal computers or phones so that they can apply them to their social media posts. Lightroom is especially unique because it provides users with the ability to copyright images with watermarks. Brand protection continues to be a significant apprehension for people who create visual compositions with digital media and actively engage in the art world.
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