204 – socialphototalk.com

In the last couple of weeks there have been some great developments for photographers looking at interesting things to read. First, The Linked Photographers’ Guide to Online Marketing and Social Media was released. I’m currently reading through my copy and will post a full review once I get through the book. It’s all about marketing using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and the other topics that we often talk about here on Social Photo Talk, so I bet that I’ll have plenty to say.

I also am reviewing a copy of iPad: The Missing Manual, due to be released on June 1st. The iPad has quickly become an important tool for the modern photographer. I’m a fan of the “Missing Manual” series and I’ll be sure to post a review once I wrap up reading it. So far it’s really good, providing a thorough look at the iPad. Stay tuned for more information.

On top of those, HDR guru Trey Ratcliff (aka Stuck in Customs) just released an eBook on digital photography workflow. As someone who has mastered a workflow to produce a large quantity of high-quality (and well-processed) images, I look forward to reading all about his process. There are two versions of the eBook, a standard edition and a bonus version for just a few dollars more that includes additional material and some information specific to HDR. I’ve just ordered my copy and can’t wait to dive in.

Whew! That’s a lot of reading to do. I’ll be sure to share reviews when I get through, but I wanted to make you aware that if you’re looking to learn and want to read, there are some great options right now!

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Episode 5 of the Social Photo Podcast is here. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about copyright and property releases for publicly-viewable art and architecture, comparing the stock photography and journalism industries, and the results of a poll on workflow. This episode is around 17 minutes.

Links to Things We Talk About

Cloud Gate (aka The Bean)
Discussion of the similarities in the industries of traditional stock photography and traditional journalism
Poll on uploading to photo sharing sites
The Social Photo Talk monthly e-newsletter

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We’re now on iTunes – if you use iTunes, you can subscribe using this link: Subscribe on iTunes

You can also find the podcast as an attachment to the main Social Photo Talk RSS Feed. You should see a player at the bottom of this post if you want to listen directly, or you can grab the Episode 5 mp3 file directly.

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Photo by papalars, used under Creative Commons licensing

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Workflow

Last weekend I had the honor of being the primary photographer for 30 Hour Day, a first-of-its-kind charity telethon held entirely online as opposed to traditional broadcast media. I was in the studio taking photos as well as processing and uploading selected photos to Flickr. Clients love quick turnaround, and by putting the photos online it gave telethon viewers a glimpse “behind the scenes” into the people and workings of the studio.

I got some questions both from people in the studio as well as online about my workflow and how I quickly pushed photos to Flickr and Twitter. As background information, I was shooting with a pair of cameras using CF cards. I had my MacBook Pro with a card reader and Lightroom. I use Jeffrey Friedl’s Lightroom Export plugin for Flickr. Here’s how I did it:

Every hour or two, I’d offload files from the CF cards onto my computer and import them into Lightroom.
During the import, Lightroom was automatically assigning event-specific keywords as well as adding my copyright info to the EXIF data.
All of the photos were then placed into a Lightroom collection for the event.
A generic description for the event was added to every photo – in this case “From the studio at 30 Hour Day”
I’d quickly go through the collection, rating each photo with one, two, or three stars. One-star photos aren’t good, two-star photos are okay but not my best work, and three-star photos are those that are candidates for uploading. Lightroom tip: if you turn on Caps Lock while rating photos, you’ll jump to the next photo as soon as you hit the number on your keyboard.
After rating, use the Library Filter to only show images in the collection that are three stars.
Go through the three-star images and make Develop adjustments to the ones I was going to publish. For the most part I wasn’t making any substantial edits, mainly white balance adjustments and the occasional exposure adjustment (either global or with the adjustment brush). I was probably spending 30 seconds (or less) per image on average.
After making Develop module adjustments on an image, when it was ready to publish I’d label it with the green label (using the keyboard shortcut – the 8 key – to make this quick).
I created a Smart Collection with the following criteria, used throughout the event as I processed photos:
- In the 30 Hour Day collection
- Rating at least 3 stars
- Color label is green
- Has not been uploaded to Flickr (this is a custom property set by the export plugin)
Go through each of the photos in the Smart Collection (to be uploaded) and give them a title.
After each batch, upload the photos to Flickr, placing them in appropriate groups.
While exporting, use the plugin’s option to send out a tweet – include the event’s hashtag (in this case #30hd) and a link to my Flickr photoset for the event.

With this system I was able to quickly and easily get photos online from the studio in a fast manner that also pushed the photos to Flickr and Twitter.

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Asset management software such as Lightroom, Aperture, and iMatch are great tools for managing a large photo collection. Here’s a quick tip for tagging and keywords.

If you photograph weddings, portraits, headshots, or other “people” photos, you’ll probably be keywording the photo with the person’s name. If you know they have an online presence using a handle, nickname, or username, it can be helpful if that keyword is associated with the photo online as well. For example, I recently photographed Tara Hunt (pictured); she’s also known online in many locations as “missrogue” so I wanted to be sure that keyword was associated with her photos along with her name.

Shown is the Lightroom keyword dialog; take a look at the synonyms box. Words added here can be automatically included on export; in this case, when I uploaded the photos to Flickr the “missrogue” synonym went along and is now included with the metadata and searchable. Configuring synonyms for online identities is a great way to maximize the searchability of your photos.

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Workflow

When I found out that Trey Ratcliff (of Stuck in Customs) was releasing a book about workflow, I was excited for a couple reasons. First, I’m kind of a workflow geek. I love reading about others’ workflows in hopes of improving my own. Secondly, Trey has a proven record in producing a large volume of high-quality work. He has, as they say, chops.

Trey’s new Digital Workflow for Photographers eBook is a good walkthrough of a modern digital photography workflow. My favorite part of the book is the beginning, where instead of diving right into technical details, the author explores a bit of the philosophy, mindset, and attitudes that will lead to a successful workflow experience. As he notes, if you go into your workflow looking at it as a tedious, complicated chore, you’re going to be a lot less effective than someone who looks at it in a more positive light.

After getting past the mental issues of an effective workflow, the book starts by talking about storage; one needs to have the files physically in order before looking at processing. Trey is an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Bridge user; these are the programs in the screenshots in the book. His detailed workflow steps take care of filtering images based on quality, keeping track of the images’ status with regards to what has or hasn’t been done, processing the photos, and how and where to save the final output of your work.

The book is visually stunning. It’s obvious that a lot of effort went into the design, and if this is a “how to” or set of instructions, I think it might be the prettiest set of instructions I’ve ever seen.

There are two versions of his book. The basic version (currently $15.99) contains all of the material described thus far. For only $4 more, the reader can get a version with Trey’s bonus section, which increases the book by several pages and goes into the specifics of Trey’s workflow for managing his HDR photography including interactions between the various applications and how he manages the numerous files involved throughout the HDR process.

Overall I can recommend the book for someone looking for a good walkthrough of a solid digital photo workflow. The one downside would be that some of the steps are very tailored to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom; I’m sure the concepts would apply to any file management system but some of his power tips make use of Lightroom features. The book is reasonably priced, an easy read, and full of tips and tricks to better manage digital photos from the time they arrive on your computer through publication.

Buy Trey Ratcliff’s Digital Workflow for Photographers book.

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