Explain how you think your own workflow may differ from others, and what adaptations you made to suit the way you yourself take and process photographs.
Workflow Variations
I have been taking digital pictures since the late 1990s and have developed a series of actions which, I feel, suits me. These actions have been put in place after several accidents when I have deleted various pictures by mistake. They say that you learn by your mistakes but it can take several occasions before a fool proof system has been instigated.
Downloading to computer
I use the lead supplied when I bought my Nikon D5000 to download the images to be processed. I could also remove the memory card from the camera and insert it into a slot on the front of my PC but I prefer to use the cable.
I took some pictures with another Nikon camera once and the owner transferred them to my memory card via his PC. For some reason I could not find the images using the cable method and had to insert the memory card into the appropriate slot to get Windows Explorer to see them. Once I had done that, I was able to move them to a more appropriate folder.
Copy rather than move
One time, several years ago, I was asked to take some pictures at a colleague’s school where she was a governor and her daughter attended. The session went well and I took over 100 pictures of the children in and around the school and in their swimming pool. When I was transferring the images to my computer, using the cable method, I used the command Ctrl+A to select all of them and for some unknown reason it only selected about half. I copied the selected images into a folder on my computer and then deleted all those on my camera memory card. It was only when I went to look for certain images in the swimming pool that I realised I had not copied them all across and had lost them as I had deleted them. Because they were still on the memory card in the camera, they had been deleted immediately, not sent to the Recycle Bin where they could have been retrieved and restored. It was a very valuable lesson to learn the hard way.
Now I check that I have selected ALL the images on the camera and copy them to a general holding folder before copying them again to a specific subject folder. I won’t delete them from the camera memory card until several days (or even weeks) later when I’m sure that I have them all safe. Memory cards had a relatively small storage area until fairly recently so you had to delete files regularly. Now memory cards hold such large amount of data it is not necessary to delete images as quickly unless you have taken an excessive number of pictures. The alternative is to keep several large scale memory cards with you to ensure you have enough storage space.
Windows Explorer
I download the images from my camera using Windows Explorer and copy them across (as I described before) to a general holding folder. I leave a copy of the images in that folder in case of catastrophes when I am manipulating the other copies.
I generally work alone and use the sorting procedure illustrated below; I have checked out how other photographers work when I have been on photo imaging courses and they seem to do much the same if they use Windows Explorer.
Adobe Bridge
I tried using Adobe Bridge when I was working through the exercises relating to this assignment and it seemed a long winded way of doing much the same thing.
Adobe Lightroom
I also downloaded a trial copy of the Adobe Lightroom software but that seemed to be for photographers who worked on large numbers of images that needed similar processing. It also seemed fairly complicated and as I like to keep things simple I made a decision to carry on as I am. As I generally work in small batches and alone I don’t feel I need to buy a full copy of this software.
Quick reject
Once I have transferred my images to the general holding folder I go into the folder I intend to work through I open Windows Explorer and go into Windows Photo Viewer to scan through to check for poor technical pictures. At the same time I use the viewer to change the orientation of portrait images to be upright and saved as such.
As I have a general backup copy of each slide if I thought an image was not worth keeping I would move it to a Reject folder, review it again at a later date and if I still thought it was no use then delete it at that point.
When I was working professionally as a photographer I would name the folder by the date and subject, so if I took the images on 18th March 2011 about the mayor, the folder would be named 18.3.2011 Mayor. If I had taken any further images they would be saved under the date/mayor subject.
Rate remaining images
If there were any images that had real potential I would save them into a Mayor Best Images folder within the main Mayor folder. This initial sort would take place, again, using Windows Picture Viewer where I would save a copy of the picture into the Mayor Best Images file but leave the original in the first folder.
Process images
Once I have decided on the images to be worked on I open Photoshop and commence to make adjustments as appropriate and relative to where they are to be used, i.e., print or web. I would go through them to manipulate them as to size, Levels, Shadows & Highlights, etc., and save the best images into a Mayor Final Images file.
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