A photographer’s workflow is extremely important as it ensures correct preparation which ultimately helps to work around any barriers that may pop up during a shoot avoiding disappointment.
I have created a diagram to display my personal workflow and this is displayed below. Please click the image to see a better quality version.
I usually stick to this workflow but sometimes alter the shooting stage depending on what it is I am photographing. Sometimes partway through shooting I like to review my photographs on my camera and then continue shooting.
Following this workflow I have completed a project where I photographed some teddy bears from my childhood. I gave myself an hour to complete the shoot. Below I will describe my progress through the exercise and link it to the different stages of my workflow.
1 Preparation – First of all I chose my subjects (some teddy bears), decided where I was going to photograph them, checked that my battery was fully charged and ensured that my memory card had plenty of space. I use a 16GB SD card in my Canon EOS 500D and carry an empty 8GB card in case I need some extra storage. I made sure my lens and attached filter were dust and smudge free and got all the equipment that I used in the shoot out of storage.
2 Camera Settings – I then checked that my desired Saturation, Contrast, Sharpness and Colour Tone settings were correctly set on the camera.
3 Setup Workspace – Next I setup my tripod, artificial lights, subjects and background in my temporary workspace.
4 The Shoot – At this stage I began taking photographs of the Teddy Bears. I played around with the White Balance, Focal Length, camera position, subject positions and lighting position to constantly strive for a better picture. I began with two bears sat on a chair in front of a white sheet but after the first photo decided that a red velvety material would make a better backdrop. I think experimented with different angles and positions of the bears but decided to add a third to give a little more variation in the the colours. I changed the camera and lighting positions many times to try and find a setup that I liked the best. It took me a while to get the lighting right but I think I got there in the end.
5 Review and Delete – After my hour was up I scrolled through my photographs on my camera and deleted any that were obviously technically faulty.
6 Transfer Shots to PC – I took my SD card out of my camera, placed it into my card reader and transferred the RAW Teddy photos to a folder on the hard drive of my computer.
7 Review again and Delete – After the transfer it was then possible to view my photos in Adobe Bridge using “Review Mode”. This made it very easy to see which photographs I could instantly Reject due to faults that I may have missed on the first review. In total I took around 50 photographs and rejected about 30, leaving me with 22 that I felt showed progression towards the best shot. The shots I selected to keep are shown below. I then took a brief break so that I could return to choose the best photos with a fresh mind.
Images 1 + 2
Images 3, 4 + 5
Images 6 + 7
Images 8, 9 + 10
Images 11, 12 + 13
Images 14, 15 + 16
Images 17, 18 + 19
Images 20 + 21
Image 22
8 Choose Final Images – After a brief break I returned and chose two shots as my final favourite images of the Teddies. These are displayed below.
Best 1 + 2
9 Retouch – After selecting my final two best shots I decided to retouch them slightly to improve them. With “Best 1” I simply boosted the contrast, warmed it up slightly and made the blacks ever so slightly darker. With “Best 2” I did the same but also cropped and slightly rotated the image to create a better composition. Finally with this image, I cloned out the shadow of the chair from the backdrop. My favourite of these two images is “Best 1”, I feel its composition, exposure and contrast are almost if not perfect.
Best 1 + 2
10 Process and Save – With shooting in RAW, after retouching a photograph in Adobe Photoshop, it then has to be saved in a different format. Also converting RAW files to JPEG reduces their file size which takes up less hard drive space and they will upload quicker to a website or blog.
11 Backup Images – I then backed up my selected photographs from the Teddy Bear shoot onto a DVD, which is kept away from my computer to ensure I have a backup of all my work.
12 Print and/or Upload – We have now reached the final stage of my workflow. This is the stage I am doing now, I am uploading my images to this blog and writing about them.
I found that this Workflow worked particularly well for me. I based it around the steps I take already when planning and conducting a shoot. There’s probably a few more steps to my workflow, such as reviewing photographs on the camera as I’m shooting, I do this regularly. Stopping to have a cup of tea halfway through would be another one.
