This is a similar exercise to the previous one but differs in that it is not a time constrained shoot, will consist of an unpredictable number of images and that I should produce a workflow specifically for this shoot.
Whereas I used my last trip to shoot a portrait session in Pasadena, LA, this trip takes me to Johannesburg in South Africa so I thought a day at the Pilanesberg National Park would give me an opportunity to shoot some wildlife. My workflow for this shoot was as follows:
- Check gear. This was to ensure that I had the right lenses, in particular my 100-400mm lens. I charged my batteries, cleaned the lenses, zeroed the camera settings and wiped my cards of old photos. I checked that I had both my 8 Gb cards to ensure enough space to shoot without compromise. Knowing that I would probably be shooting at long focal lengths I packed a travel tripod.
- I joined a couple of friends interested in photography and booked a day drive around the Pilanesberg National Park.
- I shot some 12 Gb of RAW images on 2 cards with only 1 set of batteries. Because of the space limitations inside our vehicle I used my tripod as a mono-pod to stabilise my big lens.
- During the shoot I deleted poor shots as I went but mainly reviewed the last few images whilst we were on the road to the next location. I only deleted gross errors realising that some elements of an apparently poor image might still be recovered at the post processing stage.
- Once back home I created a folder for the shoot and downloaded all the images through Lightroom. The shoot totalled 464 images. During the download I added key words to the images for future searches.
- The aim of my first quick review was to delete images that were obviously not worth keeping… this reduces the count to 356 images.
- I then created a Collection for the shoot named DPP Ex2 and made it the Target Collection to aid selection. I ran through all 356 images and put 80 into the Collection.
- Using the 80 shots in the Collection I gave Flags to the 40 that I was going to post process. I was mainly aiming to adjust the light levels, clarity, saturation, sharpness, luminance and Profiled Lens Corrections where this helped the image.
- After adjusting the photographs in Lightroom developer I gave the images a final Star rating to help me choose the best for my blog. For the final selection I colour coded them Red and then used the filter to present my final 18 which I am posting in a gallery below.
So… how well did I anticipate my needs in the various stages? I had all the equipment that I wanted and everything worked as advertised so I definitely ticked that box. My downloading and processing work was considerably quicker than on Ex 1 but that was mainly because I could do the all the post processing within Lightroom rather than using the 3 different programmes that were required for my portrait shoot.
I can’t say that this examination of my workflow has changed my habits much. I have always been fairly good about checking and packing what I need for a shoot so that hasn’t changed much. My download and post processing workflow has become a little slicker but that is as much because I am getting used to new software (Lightroom is a new addition) as it is to thinking through the process.
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