FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: WORKFLOW & KIT PART 2

After any shoot I upload to my computer ASAP - I now use a Sandisk card reader and it takes next to no time and so I do it once I get home, if it's after a wedding I'll pour myself a glass of wine and let it do it's thing in the background.

I'm trying to get my post processing time down but since discovering Lightroom and getting switched on to Photo Mechanic it's significantly faster than it used to be. Using both of these I managed to get images back to clients within 2 weeks despite working full time as well (though I did do some stupid hours and spent many nights in front of the computer screen.)

Firstly I'll use Photo Mechanic to select the images I want in the final edit, it's simple and really fast. Emma Case did a fantastic tutorial about it and that's what convinced me to give it a go. You can get a free trial and I promise you at the end of it you'll be waving your credit card in glee. 

This programme has cut down my culling time form about 3 hours in Lightroom waiting for previews to load etc to about 30 minutes of intense clicking AND my couples get more shots!

I also believe Photo Mechanic has the power to do exposure, white balance adjustments and the like but I feel Lightroom is a much better tool for these.

I create a separate folder for these RAW files and then import that into my Lightroom library. It's here that I do image adjustment and creative editing.

It used to be that I used Lightroom for image adjustment, though as I mentioned, the goal is to get as much right in camera as possible to save time later, there's always something that could benefit with a little tweak. I'd then export everything and open it in batches in Photoshop, running actions over everything and it took forever. Lightroom 4 practically does away with the need for Photoshop at all - it  has a whole new set of sliders vs LR3 and even effectively does Photoshop staples like dodging, burning and even a cheeky bit of teeth whitening. 

I rely heavily on two particular sets of presets that i think have been a wise investment - and I'll come on those and why in a second. Firstly, there is no preset or action in the world which will make a bad photo look good unless it's going to swap it out with something and stamp little pink unicorns all over it. You need to see the light, connect with you subject, channel emotion and then use whichever digital editing tool you have to out your own stamp on things. Over the years I've spent an absolute fortune on Photoshop related bits and bobs like the good hobbyist I was, and always only used them for a short time with the exception of the two below Lightroom Presets. I'm trying to move my work into a slightly more natural image and these two help me do it effortlessly.

There's lots of debate about whether with a bit of skill and ingenuity you could create these yourself but  I firmly believe that life's too short to mess around when someone has already done that for you.

VSCO film - I've talked about this before, it's ace and Andria Lindquist does a much better job than I at talking through in this walkthrough.

Red Leaf Film Emulsion presets - Simple, natural and a light touch and especially good for natural light.

I try to work through everything in one sitting for consistency, give it a day and do whatever the photo version of proof reading is by creating a gallery I can scroll through to check that I'm happy with everything before exporting a high res and a low res version from Photoshop into destination files which will eventually be copied to USB for my clients.

The final stage is upload - as I use Showit for my main website, each client also get's their own online gallery and an online proofing gallery which houses the high res photos and also doubles up as external storage. Both of these have their own upload servers so I set and leave it to do it's thing.


All of this means I can do everything I need to do in a day and a half's work maximum provided I don't get too distracted by cat stroking or chocolate eating, both of which are major time sucks for me!

Next time - blogging, reading and training.

For Photographers: VSCO film review

So, a few weeks back I mentioned that I was going to start a 'For Photographers' section of the blog, I suppose my motive was maybe to help anyone who, like me, is in the first or second year of running their business, still holding down a day job and possibly nosy about how someone else does something. I've decided to be quite open with these posts and would love to hear any thoughts or comments...

So, workflow, that mythical and terrifying thing. Or not, but there's a whole, huge market out there for things to help us out - Photoshop actions and Lightroom presets. I've bought loads of them, maybe a secret (or not so secret) shopoholic tendency of mine! Each time though, before I invested I wanted to do my research - I'd study Flickr, read blog posts, check all the links on the various websites and any reviews and each time found it really helpful. So, once I had these actions amassed I would do everything in batches, opening 40 or so at a time in Adobe Camera Raw and then editing each image individually. A whole wedding would take ages.

Then I started introducing Lightroom as a tool - doing all my RAW adjustments in one place and then using it to adjust sizes and export nicely labelled and resized images, but I never did my 'creative' edits in it. I knew people who did, but I could never get things to look as soft and smooth as I liked; the contrast was always wrong. The thought of not being able to individually control the curves was terrifying.

Anyway, to cut a long story short VSCO film happened. It was supposed to be a way to achieve the looks we all wanted in Lightroom using some fancy camera specific profiles. It was bigged up by everyone's favourite photographers. So what did I do? Ignored the hype and carried on working the way I did before.

Then, this year, after upgrading my camera to the D700, I decided to give it a go. As I could find precious few reviews by 'ordinary' photographers, here I am. It's amazingly simple to use and has streamlined my workflow no end. Instead of doing each image individually I can get one just how I like it, and then replicate it across similar lighting conditions. I still check and tweak each one, but using Lightroom makes it so much easier. The Black and Whites are amazing, and just to try it out I edited some images using my previous techniques (mainly Red Leaf Film Shift actions with a contrast adjustment layer with the contrast brought down to -15) and compared the two and their was almost no difference. The colour options are pretty good too.

I've shared some SOOC shots next to the edit, with a description of the 'recipe' for each look. As you can see, there's not lots to it but it's a subtle change that makes all the difference to my work.

                          SOOC                                                                     Edited

The B&W images are all made using Kodak Tri-X++, with the following applied from the toolkit - Faded+, Vignette++ and Grain++ and I'll play with the fill light too.

The colour has a few more steps and has to be done in this order to achieve the same look: Kodak Portra 400, then from the Toolkit: Faded +, Creamy Highlights (safe), Magenta Shadows +, Grain + and Vignette +. In addition I'll sharpen slightly and slide the blacks up, usually no more than to 5 otherwise it gets horribly contrasty. See, super simple and highly recommended. It's given me my evenings back, which is worth the investment alone.