Exercise: Your own workflow 2

The aim of Exercise: Workflow 2, is to devise a workflow for a specific shooting assignment that is longer in length than the one in Workflow 1, and will thus involve a larger number of images. I shot 226 images while visiting family at the Coorong, which is a natural region South of Adelaide, whilst visiting recently.

Pre-Shoot and Shoot:

My pre-shoot and shooting plan is displayed below:

Workflow flow-chart, Preparation and Shoot

I chose to use my Canon 30D for the shoot, and brought two lenses along, with matching filters (polarizer, neutral density etc). I had my tripod with me but did not take it out on every shooting session. As this was a landscape shoot, all light was natural, and the time of day very important. I did almost all of my shooting in the two hours before sunset, though I did take a couple of photos in the middle of the day, and some in the afternoon for contrast. I varied my camera settings depending on subject, light availability, time of day, and whether I was using my tripod or not.

I was not able to edit any images during the shoot as I didn't have a laptop with me. I did however review on camera after each session and made adjustments to my plan for the next session (for example, I took my tripod down on the second evening so I could use smaller apertures and increase my DOF). In terms of variations to the above workflow, I accidentally left the cable for the battery charger in my bag left in Adelaide. Fortunately it's just a kettle lead so I could borrow one relatively easily. I only deleted a few images during the shooting sessions, as review on the back of the camera is not ideal.

Post-Shoot:

My flow chart is displayed below:

Workflow flow-chart, Post-Processing

I followed the flowchart above fairly closely. After reviewing my images initially, I ended up with 157 images with one or more stars. All zero star images were moved to the /delete folder, and deleted later after a second review. I performed the starring process over a number of sessions in order to adequately review and 'step back' from the process, which I find very useful. All starring sessions were performed with Digikam set in full-screen mode, to maximise the space the image takes up on the screen. I will write more detail about the editing process for these images in another blog, for the Editing Exercise.

I then determined I had 11 images with 3 stars. They are shown below:

Images with 3 stars.

I then chose two images which were processed further in Photoshop to represent my visit to the Coorong. They are displayed below.

Table against wall

Coorong; Grasses and water at sunset

My post-processing workflow is in the midst of change. I am going to night classes once a week to learn more about photoshop editing, and applying these learnings to the workflow I used on the images above. I will write more about that in Editing.

My notes in my logbook for this exercise are shown below:

Notebook for Workflow 2

In summary, I followed my flowchart more closely for this exercise, as I incorporated the learnings from the previous exercise. Reviewing during the shoot enabled me to improve my images and to leave with a wider variety of images than had I just one out once.