Depending on where you are in your photography journey, editing photos can be a fairly mindless task. Especially the sorting part! Zooming in, over and over again, to check sharpness; picking out the best of the bunch, over and over again; flipping between two or three photos in a burst to see which one is better, over and over again. An hour can go by without even realizing it!

And then there’s the actual photo processing itself. Brightening, adding contrast, sharpening, adding vignette, saturation. The process can be fairly regular sometimes.

And of course there’s cloning out unwanted distractions and removing dust bunnies. Over and over again. Another hour goes by.

It’s not always the case, but often, photo editing can be time-consuming. But while it can be time-consuming, it’s not always brain-taxing.

So that’s when I like to bring out the audiobooks!

There are different wedding photos that, when I look at them, the first thing that comes to mind is . . . fugitives fleeing through torch-lit tunnels under the streets of 1st century Rome! Or, an historical event from Bob Fu’s experience living in modern-day Communist China. Or perhaps an insightful illustration on wisely caring for the poor from “When Helping Hurts.”

Audiobooks are a great way to maximize your time while editing photos/

But guess what?! Next week, there’s 18hrs of free live presentations that you might find very interesting! A friend of mine, Christian Horstmann, who I actually met through the Lenspiration membership a while back, has brought together a whole lineup of speakers who will be talking about Christian discipleship in family life. It’s called the Vibrant Home Life Summit. Why not listen to them while we’re editing pictures!

They also have a swag bag, which means lots of free, downloadable resources, courses, memberships and stuff.

And I’m also running a photo contest for them! Interested in some pretty sweet prizes (some of which relate to photographers, too)? Here are the details of the contest, with some photography tips too:

Now, there is a little bit of a problem: the photo contest deadline is midnight tonight.

So, you probably won’t be able to go out and take epic photos. But you could at least submit some photos from your portfolio. And so that’s what I’m doing here! I went through the last few months of photos, picked out new ones that had paths in them, and will submit those. I don’t think my photos are going to be competing against your to win any prizes, but I’m submitting them anyway so Vibrant Home Life can have some pretty pictures to use throughout their summit next week. Looking forward to seeing your photos come in for the Vibrant Home Life Summit Photo Contest!