Photography workflows?

[nickburt]

So, you've had a long day on the trail, camp is set up, fire lit, food cooking, time to sort out the day's photos and blog.

I always start a trip with the best of intentions and promise myself I'll sort out photos daily or every couple of days. but it often goes to rat sh.t after the first beer or two, and I promise myself I'll do it tomorrow night, then it ends up being such a back log, it ends up waiting 'til I get home. - assuming I have enough memory cards to last 'til I get home. Then it seems to take for ever to find the time of an evening or two, or three .... to sit down and catch up on two, three, four weeks, or more, worth of photos.

I guess remaining disciplined about it is the best place to start - and I get someone in the party to be my reminder - keep nagging me to do it. If we're in a reasonably big group of people, it's sometime easier to keep under control as everyone has a job to do on arrival at camp site.

I always take a laptop and portable hard drive. Not just for photography, but mainly for storage and back up copies, and with two cameras and two Iphones, the number of shots per day can be quite a lot some days, depending on location and activity.

A good professional photographer friend of mine always suggests to take enough cards never to need to delete anything, and advocates that you don't have a safe back up scheme unless they're stored in three places:
While away: card/laptop/back up portable hard drive - he even psots a copy home if he's away for a long time.
Once home: network storage drives (on and off site) and an off site cloud storage
Possibly a bit OTT, but then he is a professional and his livelihood depends on his photos.
With potential for failure, loss, damage or theft, I guess he has a point

So, what photographywork flows do you have for downloading, sorting and saving all those photos?
On the trail - hence why Q here in Camp Q&A
On return home

 

[Quicksilver]

I've never taken a long enough trip that I needed to do any of that on the trail. I do all of that when I get home. But if I were to go on an extended trip like that, I would likely do something similar to what I did when I went to Iraq. I set up a folder for each month. I didn't take so many photos that I needed to break it down any further than that, but weekly or even daily sub-folders could be set up. You could split those up even further if you wanted, by having photos and videos separated into their own folders. With the folders set up ahead of time, all you have to do at the end of the day is offload pics and vids into the appropriate folder.

I also kept separate folders for photos and videos that other people took, so they didn't get mixed together with mine. A folder for each person, then sub-folders broken down as far as suit your needs. That took more time to sort for me, because they weren't sorting theirs the same way, and I was just copying from their hard drives. But in an organized group trip, everyone could use the same format and make sharing quick and easy.

 

[Steve]

I've been lazy on my 4-6 week cross-country travels. I'll post a couple photos to Instagram, which then gets sent to Facebook. And then when I get somewhere with wifi, I'll dump all of that day's photos unedited to a folder on my SmugMug account for friends and family to see. Then I'll go through and clean up the folder and edit select photos when I get home. Or, more likely, just leave them all there and not do anything else unless I want to feature a specific photo.

On the trail - hence why Q here in Camp Q&A

I'm glad you added this, because I was just about to move the thread to Overland Related Recreation with the rest of the photography threads. ;)

 

[nickburt]

I've been lazy on my 4-6 week cross-country travels. I'll post a couple photos to Instagram, which then gets sent to Facebook. And then when I get somewhere with wifi, I'll dump all of that day's photos unedited to a folder on my SmugMug account for friends and family to see. Then I'll go through and clean up the folder and edit select photos when I get home. Or, more likely, just leave them all there and not do anything else unless I want to feature a specific photo.


I'm glad you added this, because I was just about to move the thread to Overland Related Recreation with the rest of the photography threads. ;)

Yes, I was more interested in how everyone manages their photos while on a trip, rather than when they get back home.
Tips and tricks to make it more efficient and less time consuming, and therefore encourage getting most of it done while still away.

 

[nickburt]

Anybody tried one of these to help with speeding up the workflow process once in camp, or even while still out on the trail. Even do away with the laptop altogether?

Gnarbox

 

[Merlin2111]

First, you must be cooler than I am because no one is jumping at the chance to see my shots lol. However, I do use a DSLR, Sony a6000, which can send photos to any device over a local Wifi network. This lets me wirelessly send them to a tablet, phone, and laptop. I then edit them with Snapseed, an android app, and send them off to my 3 highly dedicated followers (and if your reading this Hi Mom!).

I am not sure if that helps but having the ability to use one editing software on multiple devices all wirelessly definitely speeds up my workflow.

 

[nickburt]

First, you must be cooler than I am because no one is jumping at the chance to see my shots lol. However, I do use a DSLR, Sony a6000, which can send photos to any device over a local Wifi network. This lets me wirelessly send them to a tablet, phone, and laptop. I then edit them with Snapseed, an android app, and send them off to my 3 highly dedicated followers (and if your reading this Hi Mom!).

I am not sure if that helps but having the ability to use one editing software on multiple devices all wirelessly definitely speeds up my workflow.

Unfortunately my DSLRs don't have wifi capability, (I need to drag myself up on this) so I just dump onto the laptop and a back up drive and then into the cloud (assuming a decent data connection) for peace of mind and back up security. I try to keep a copy on cards (assuming I have enough with me - or buy another). But, I'm a danger to myself though as I often shoot raw and jpg, which really takes up storage space quickly and makes transfers to the cloud long and data consuming.
If I have to do any editing while on the road, I generally limit it to a basic auto correction then fire the photo at whatever website it's destined for.
If there's that real "must have" shot, then I'll spend the time in Adobe (Lightroom & Photoshop) to do what tweaks are needed before sending on.

 

[Road]

I just got off the road from a 16 week, 12,500 mile trip around the country. Being primarily a gear-gathering and testing trip and not a photography trip, most images and vids were shot with iPhones, though I did also use an iPad Mini, a Nikon DSLR, and a Fuji X100F. So, a few different sources and types of files to store. Will be even more file types when I get the Go Pro and drone going.

I'm an Adobe Lightroom fan for photography workflow and have taught Lightroom, photography, and off-camera and studio lighting for ages.

My workflow to get images from camera to storage is pretty much the same whether I'm in the studio, at a home-base somewhere for a bit, or on the road. I only leave images on a card long enough to verify they've been downloaded and backed up to where they're supposed to be. I never use the card as the primary storage as they are just too easily misplaced, lost, damaged or corrupted. OR you think you've already offloaded the images from this card or that and use it again before you've actually off-loaded them.

[Quick tip: always reformat your cards in-camera after dumping your images and reusing it in your camera. Don't just move the images or copy and delete and think your card is empty. Reformat them with the camera for far less headaches.]

I've formed a habit over the years of being meticulous and organized when loading my images into Adobe Lightroom, which allows you to make simultaneous copies to two places. Quick and easy. Both places for me are external hard drives with exactly the same file structure, naming conventions, and hierarchy. So then, even when on the road, I have two copies in separate places. I also keep my LR Catalog (different than the Library - think of the catalog as being like a card catalog you go through for info on where things are and the Library being the actual things) on the external HD.

When back somewhere with my other drives, my primary external is always backed up again to another external which does not travel with me. If loading images to your laptop, you'll find pretty quick you're going to be using up all your space and will have some images there, some elsewhere, etc. Gets confusing fast. I never keep images on my laptop permanently. All raw images, images in process, and all finished images are on external HD or cloud-based service, far more rarely, iCloud.

When your initial import is done with Lightroom, and any and all changes you make to those files, including moving, renaming, deleting, creating folders or organizing in any other way is all done from within Lightroom, things become much easier, life is better, and you will be a happier person.

Some people like to file their images by year/month/date when they import them. I've always found that cumbersome and prefer to have more of an identifier in the folder structure for quicker, at-a-glance ID.

I keep one main folder called LR LIBRARY and all folder hierarchy inside that, then am religious about keeping all my images, new folders, etc in that one main folder. This way, if I ever need to copy, backup, or move my Lightroom Library, it will all be in one nice and neatly organized place.

Inside the main LR LIBRARY folder I have folders for each state or main area I travel through, or a folder like I did for this trip called "17-geargatheringtrip." 17 is for the year. I may have another folder or two outside the State folders like "Family" "eBay" "Clients" "Lessons" etc, but all my travel photos are organized primarily by state/location/year

So, a state folder may have several folders within, like TX/Big Bend/2017, etc. Then inside that may be folders to break it down further like, for example, a trail or campsite name.

That said, the images for this trip, from several different camera sources, are all in the "17-geargatheringtrip" folder, though segregated by camera type. This was so I could better determine which sources were better for different future uses. Then I sit with a beer when I have time and add keywords and ratings to the images and delete any that don't quite cut the mustard.

In LR, when you rate and add keywords, you don't have to move the images to your "best" folder or to, for example, "camp setups" or "trailer" folder. You can leave them all in their original spot and then filter for rating type (stars, flags, color), or for keywords like "awning" or "kitchen gear" or "Big Bend" or whatever keywords and ratings you've applied. THEN you see which images you really want to work on and export for use. Efficient, simple, quick and easy.

I could go on about rating and keyword aids at length, as well as other advantages all built into Lightroom, but you get the idea. It's designed by photographers for photographers.

The main thing in the initial "get-em-off-the-camera-into-storage" process is to develop a good habit and form an organizational structure that makes sense to you and that you will remember. Then stick with it. The way I do it may not be ideal for you.

Make things easy on yourself, not harder, and you'll have a lot more fun creating images, not just trying to figure out where they are.

 

[nickburt]

Thanks for a great reply @Road . I have used Lightroom but not as effectively as I should - note to self - learn more about how to use it properly

 

[Road]

Thanks for a great reply @Road . I have used Lightroom but not as effectively as I should - note to self - learn more about how to use it properly

You're welcome, @nickburt - Lightroom has recently released Lightroom CC (which was the name of their older program, which is now Lightroom Classic - I know, confusing) which sounds like it is meant more for field edit on mobile devices and uploading directly to social media. Here's a great article from Dec 13, 2017 outlining the differences between the two programs-- Lightroom Classic vs Lightroom CC --and why it's worth using both. Lightroom CC is now included as part of the Lightroom Classic/Photoshop monthly plan.

If you were here in New England, @nickburt, I'd be happy to give you a free two-hour lesson in all things Lightroom!

 

[nickburt]

You're welcome, @nickburt - Lightroom has recently released Lightroom CC (which was the name of their older program, which is now Lightroom Classic - I know, confusing) which sounds like it is meant more for field edit on mobile devices and uploading directly to social media. Here's a great article from Dec 13, 2017 outlining the differences between the two programs-- Lightroom Classic vs Lightroom CC --and why it's worth using both. Lightroom CC is now included as part of the Lightroom Classic/Photoshop monthly plan.

If you were here in New England, @nickburt, I'd be happy to give you a free two-hour lesson in all things Lightroom!

Many thanks for the reply, and the offer - might be a bit expensive to nip over to you
I do have both CC (I have an Adobe CC account) and Classic - just need to spend more time with them and learn more.......