Exercise 2: Your own Workflow - 2

The aim of exercise 2 is similar to the first i.e devising a particular workflow for a specific shooting assignment however this nest assignment should be open-ended and unstructured. The key elements of this workflow are :

• the number of images being unpredictable but high
• it should last a sufficient amount of time that you would want to consider reviewing and possibly partially editing the images during the shoot.

I need to plan and write the workflow in advance and assess it later. I should consider how well I anticipated the needs of the various stages from capture to print. Did I reach any new conclusions about workflow?

The basic workflow remains the same but as I had chosen to take advantage of an outing organised to visit the Commercial Road for my assignment I needed to take into consideration travel arrangements and timings that also fit in with others. I travel lighter when doing street photography and H&S is different as you need to take into consideration members of the public and traffic.

Reviewing images after a period of time is always a good idea to ensure you have the correct exposure settings and are obtaining the images that you had in mind at the outset. However it is never a good idea to delete individual images from your memory card as this can corrupt the card.

[Choose genre and location

[Organise suitable transportation to location, check timetables etc

 

[Choose suitable equipment according to what you own and can carry

 

[Prepare equipment. Ensure battery and spare are fully charged. Batteries in flash charged. Memory cards formatted and spare cards available. Lens and sensor are clean

[Check weather conditions and dress accordingly. Take light refreshments.

[Ensure health and safety is taken into consideration

[Street/Documentary Photography means constant observation and watching the light, looking for opportunities

[Take photographs. If trying for a coherent style keep the focal length the same. If experimenting vary focal length/lens to discover your preferred way of working.

[Take photographs using  jpeg+RAW

[Upload to PC using Adobe Bridge

[Use Template to embed metadata and apply custom name

[View images, complete technical check deleting outright mistakes

[Choose final images for processing

[Open in Camera Raw

[Use Workspace ProPhoto 16bit 300dpi

[Adjust if necessary. Exposure reading first, temperature, tint and anything else as required

[Open in Photoshop
 
[Crop if required
 
[Create curves layer rename C&D (Colour and Density)

[Create other adjustment layers as required. Fine tune adjustment layers using black and white paintbrushes to remove/reapply layer mask. Adjust opacity, size hardness of brush to obtain required effect.

[Save Master file with layers intact. Save As Tiff file, LZW, ZIP compression then flatten Image, Save As TiffV2 for conversion to other file/image sizes.

 

[Sharpen at last stage before printing or final use in Books or Web. For internet use colour profile SRGB and resize. Adobe Photoshop CS4 has a useful "save for web" option. For personal printing use ProPhoto. If using printers establish which colour profiles they work with.

[ Set correct printer [ Paper Orientation [ Colour Management [Photoshop Manages Colour

[Printer/paper profile [Perceptual [ Black Point Compensation.

[Page Set Up [Best Photo [Advanced Tab

[Source Sheet [ Paper Type [ Photo RPM [ Paper Size [ Untick High Speed [ ICM  [ OK [ Print