Just got the chance to take a few photos of Oskar today, and even though it isn’t the most flattering light or background, I still think the photographic composition turned out decently. I aimed to get the focus of the photo in the diagonal, such that the line between Oskar’s eye and the yellow cow creates a diagonal.
Archive for category Photo
Is that a Yellow Cow?
Jul 21
Workflow pt 3: Exporting
Feb 6
The last two articles I covered how I get my images into the computer and how I catalogue them to find them for later.
This article I will cover my usual workflow for exporting my photos so I can share them with the world. There are many sharing it, such as printing but I wont cover that. The usual way I do it is by uploading to flickr, and linking to that if I want people to see the photos.
I am using Lightroom 2, and there is no direct interaction with flickr (unlike what I have seen the beta of Lightroom 3), but Jeffrey Friedl has made a very nice Lightroom plugin for exporting to flickr called Jeffrey’s “Export to Flickr” Lightroom Plugin. His site gives you the installation instructions.
So when I want to export a photo I select the photo, or set of photos and hit export (ctrl+shift+e), then you will get up an export option. In the top there is kind of an image banner with the destination. If you click this his plugin will show up as well.
You can set the different options you want, such as set and groups to upload it to, as well as adding or rating by keywords. This is quite easy to figure out. Doing it this way means I upload my photo, and the title and keywords are set to what I did in Lightroom. This is easy and saves me a lot extra tedious work for sharing my photo. It also means I will actually do it instead of just thinking of it.
This was only covered shortly, but I think it is fairly easy to figure out.
The other thing I want to cover is how to make flickr work with my website. It is fairly simple. I use wordpress and then I use the Flickr Photo Album it works well and enables me to make a gallery as well as including photos in my posts. The problem with it, is that it doesn’t seem to be updated anymore. Yet I haven’t found something better yet.
The last plugin I will promote here is the Thumbnails for Excerpts which enables me to get my photos into my rss feeds. Just the way I have solved it. If you do it otherwise, let me know 
This really reduce the amount of work I have to do share the photos with the world, and lets me do what I like rather than spending time retyping keywords and moving files.
/Kristian
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After the first post about workflow, I now have the photos in lightroom, and the default selection is the photos I have just imported. So now I am ready to work on it.
This part of the work is shamelessly stolen inspired from others, but it works for me so why reinvent the wheel. I have several runs through the images, where I each run narrow them down and exclude the images not worth working on.
1. First run through is a very basic and quick run. By quick I mean I don’t use more than 5 seconds per image.
To start this, double click the first image from the day to get it up in a larger view. For each photo I either pick or reject it. This is done by pressing “x” for reject or “p” for pick. That way it is marked with either with a black flag with an x in it, or a white flag.
If you press the capslock before starting this, you will automatically go to the next image once you have either picked or rejected the image.
I have multiple reasons for rejecting an image, it can be camera shake or horribly wrong exposure. Or whatever reason you can come up with.
Once you are done press “g” to get back to the overview.
2. Now I do one of two, either I delete the rejected photos right away, or I hide them for now. (Yes I do delete photos, there are no reason to keep irrelevant data, it just helps filling your harddrive).
If I choose to delete them, in the overview I press ctrl+backspace.
If I choose to just delete them now, I put on a filter to only show photos marked with “picked” flag. This is done in the “library filter” bar above the grid of photos. (see image) 
3. The next run through I mark the remaining images with 1-3 stars. Like the first run through I choose the first image and get it in a large view I then press the buttons 1-3 depending on the score I want it to have. (Pressing capslock, advance to the next image as well).
- 1 star mean; I might consider deleting them later on, but then again no. Not a great photo, but there might be a little documentary value in it.
- 2 stars mean; decent snapshot, but nothing more. I definitely don’t want to delete it, but I also don’t want to spent a lot of time in post processing it. Maybe show it to parents/family as it shows some event.
- 3 stars mean; I want to post process, it has potential to be shown to others once I am done with it.
Depending on how many photos I have, I hide the photos with less than three stars, in the same way as I hid the rejected photos.
4. Once this is done, I am now left with what I feel is worth working on. I now take a tagging round. I go through each photo with three stars and tag them with keywords.
I usually add place, names of the people in the photo along with event and subject of the image, and not least whatever strikes me as relevant for the photo. It can be either done either by typing keywords into the box on the right hand of the grid view, or by clicking the keyword list. I type in what I find obvious and then scroll through the list of keywords I already have to see if I missed something obvious.
I just realised you can have a hierarchy of keywords, which I have started to use. I don’t want many levels, but I have a top level keyword called “Location” and then in that category I have all locations I have tagged. This makes the overview in the keyword list a bit easier.
You can arrange the keywords in the list by dragging them around.
While I am tagging each photo I usually also go through the other information on them, giving them a title, maybe a caption if that is relevant and so on and so forth. This seems like a tedious task, and it can be. But the keywords will follow the photo later on, so doing it now is just going to save you time later on.
5. Once I am done with tagging all the photos I start post processing the most interesting one. I wont cover the post processing in this series.
6. After I am done post processing an image, I give it 3-5 stars (press 3-5 button),
- 3 stars mean; It didn’t turn out quite as good as I had hoped
- 4 stars mean; This is worth sharing with other people
- 5 stars mean; I should print this and hang it on the wall
This was a rather long run through my work flow. I hope you can get some inspiration. One of the things I think is good about the multiple runs through is that I see the images more than once, and already after the first run through I have an idea of what I like and what not. And sometimes this run through triggers something inside me which I feels but can’t explain. The other comment is; this workflow is not set in stone. I don’t do it like this every time. Some times I am too eager to process one particular image and so on. But it is a good template for me.
Next time I will cover the export for the web phase of the my work flow.
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I was asked what software I use for my photo work flow, or more specifically what part of Wordpress I used for publishing images. I thought I would expand it a bit and give a quick run through of the whole work flow process.
My choice of software for the work flow is largely based on arbitrary decisions and what I heard was good. Two key elements that I knew I wanted to use is Adobe Lightroom for library and post processing purposes and Flickr for sharing and showing images. The second constraint about making a work flow is that I am lazy, so the less work I have to do the better.
First thing is of course that I take the picture, and then they are stored in the memory card in the camera. From there I need to move them onto the computer. I usually use the USB cable, since I don’t have a card reader that can read compact flash cards. Either way, I get the compact flash card to register as a removable device on the computer, so I can access the pictures.
I then use Digital Image Mover (DIM) which is a small java program that allows for a very flexible folder/file structure. Some would say I should discard it, and use Lightroom for import as well. But I have decided on a file structure that looks like \<year>\<month>\<Day> – <Description>\Raw for the raw files. I haven’t managed to get Lightroom to give me that description afterwards, but it does help me a great deal when trying to locate the photos later on. The description is very short eg. “Odense Zoo” just to take one example, but it helps me pinpoint what I am looking for if I know the month and year of the photos.
Well DIM, lets me do that, so I keep using it. Even if I have a to mash a button or two more, which is against my lazy policy. DIM is free, though the author has set up a donation option if you like it.
Since I usually shoot in RAW copying the files might take a while, so I usually open up Adobe Lightroom and grab a cup of coffee while the computer thinks.
Once the files are copied I disconnect the camera, but I don’t format the memory card just yet. I usually wait till I have successfully imported them into Lightroom, which is the next step.
I use Lightroom for two things. I use it for keeping track of my images, so I use it for naming, comments, keywords, scoring and so on. All part of trying to locate the photos later on. Which is yet easy for me, but the more images I take the harder it gets. The second part is of course post processing of the images.
I then choose the import option in the lower left corner of Lightroom when it is in library mode, and since I already moved the files to the final location, I choose to import without moving. First organisation with in Lightroom comes in the import process. Usually there are a few keywords that can be added to the whole batch, it could be the location, event or person. Add them as soon as possible, that means less work later on.
/Kristian
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Buying new photo gear
Jan 16
A quick non “one photo per day” project update, but still related to photo. I just bought a new lens, or rather I bought a used one. A minolta 50mm AF 1.7 lens. My best guess is that you will see a lot more from that soon.
I took a few pictures of Oskar last night, and I love the feel of the lens. First of all the images are way sharper than with the kit lens. Which is pretty obvious, since that lens is cheap and made of plastic. But I am still impressed by it.
The other thing is the wide open aperture it has, so I am able to capture images in much lower light conditions. The look and feel of the image I put in this post is just wonderful. For the first time I can see the play of shadow and light and the bokeh (the blurry part of the image” just have a nice feel to them.
Just wanted to brag a bit about my latest purchase and how much I love it. You will see more to it with the project.
/Kristian