Lightroom Photo Editor – Ongoing Nightly Aurora Photography Editing

Lightroom Photo Editor. Ongoing Nightly Aurora Photography Editing About Us Aurora In Alaska™ is a Northern Lights tour company based in Fairbanks, Alaska. Professional photography is an important part of our guest experience, and we are looking for a reliable photo editor to become a long-term part of our seasonal media workflow. This is not a one-time editing project. We are looking for someone we can train to understand our editing style and who can consistently process our photography throughout the Northern Lights season. Our season generally runs from late August through April The Work After our tours, our photography team produces RAW images that need to be culled, edited in Adobe Lightroom, organized, exported, and ultimately delivered through our SmugMug galleries. Volume varies considerably from night to night. Some nights may have no work at all. Other nights may have 50–200 photographs, while particularly busy nights may produce 300–600+ images. We need someone comfortable with this fluctuating workload. Our goal is to establish a workflow where media from a completed tour is available to our editor, processed promptly, and ideally ready for guest delivery the following day. Editing Includes * RAW photo processing in Adobe Lightroom * Exposure and white-balance correction * Color correction and grading * Noise reduction for high-ISO/night photography * Aurora/Northern Lights enhancement while maintaining a realistic appearance * Portrait adjustments, including properly exposing guests against the night sky * Cropping and straightening when necessary * Maintaining consistency across photographs taken by multiple photographers/cameras * Culling obvious duplicates, missed-focus images, test shots, etc. * Applying and refining our established presets/style * Exporting finished high-resolution JPEGs * Organizing completed photographs * Potentially uploading completed galleries to SmugMug Very Important: Non-Destructive Workflow We need to maintain ownership and access to our original RAW files and Lightroom editing information. We want a workflow where your Lightroom adjustments remain available to us so that our team can later open an image, see the edits that were made, make additional adjustments if necessary, and re-export the photograph. We are specifically interested in candidates experienced with Lightroom catalogs, Lightroom Cloud, Smart Previews, XMP metadata, or similar collaborative/non-destructive Lightroom workflows. What We're Looking For Reliability and consistency are extremely important to us. We are looking for someone who: * Has substantial Adobe Lightroom experience * Is comfortable processing large batches of photographs * Has experience with wedding, event, portrait, landscape, astrophotography, or other high-volume photography * Can closely follow an established editing style * Can provide fast turnaround during our operating season * Has reliable high-speed internet * Communicates clearly when there is a problem or delay * Is interested in a recurring, long-term working relationship Experience editing **night photography, astrophotography, Northern Lights photography, or portraits photographed at night** is a major plus, but not an absolute requirement. Turnaround Our ultimate goal is **next-day delivery whenever practical**. Because our tours take place at night in Alaska, there may actually be a significant time-zone advantage for editors located in other parts of the world. Our team can finish a tour and upload media while an editor in another time zone begins their workday. We are open to international candidates. Paid Trial Before selecting our primary editor, we plan to conduct a **paid editing trial** with a small number of candidates. We will provide: * A selection of our actual RAW photographs * Examples of our finished photographs * Guidance on our preferred editing style We will evaluate the trial based on editing quality, consistency, turnaround time, organization, communication, and ability to follow our established style. Potential for Additional Long-Term Work We are developing a larger media workflow that will eventually include video editing and social media production. This position is primarily focused on photography, but candidates with relevant video or media-management experience are welcome to mention those skills. When Applying Please include: 1. Examples of your Lightroom editing work, preferably before-and-after examples. 2. Your experience processing large batches of RAW photographs. 3. Approximately how many photographs you can comfortably process in a day. 4. Your typical turnaround time for a batch of 100, 300, and 600 photographs. 5. Your experience with Lightroom Cloud, Smart Previews, catalogs, or collaborative Lightroom workflows. 6. Whether you have experience with night photography, astrophotography, aurora photography, weddings, or events. 7. Your location/time zone and typical working hours. 8. Whether you would be interested in completing a paid trial using our photographs. Please begin your proposal with the words **"Northern Lights"** so we know you have read the complete posting.