Its been a week or so since my last post – so here is what I have been up to:
Lots and lots of photos!
The process of editing is a complicated one – not necessarily in terms of how to sequence images for their maximum impact, but in choosing the right images to sequence.
I am not even close to that point! Why you might ask?
I am still sorting, keywording, and compiling everything.
There is a process to all of this – and much like everything, the process is the important part. Is it fun? No. Is it quick? Not at all.
The question comes down to the ability to quickly and easily sort and catalog my images so that I can find everything in the future.
Why is that important? Eventually after time passes and I move on to other projects, what do I do when someone asks – “Hey can I see that photo of the town, with the store, that sells the lamb; You know, the one in Morocco”
Read on for my solution, and maybe a tip or two. (so this post isn’t a complete waste of your time)
First step: Getting a workflow!
This was made much easier by a wonderful source of information on DAM (digital asset management) : blogger John Beardsworth.
John posted a wonderful blog, and download on the process of using smart collections to help you manage a workflow in Lightroom.
It looks a little like this:
The process involves setting a group of photos as the “current work” collection. The rest of the collections are “smart” collections (think iTunes playlist sytle)
that use that collection as a reference.
For more info – visit John’s blog entry @ this link.
So, I start with the metadata section and proceed to make sure that all of the catalog photos contain my copyright and contact info, titles, and relevant captions.
There is a second school of thought on this, which is to only do this for your selected photos and not for the majority of the group. Why take the time (this step can be time consuming) – if you are never going to use the photo, right?
Well, since this is a boring and monotonaous process, I prefer to only do it once. On the off chance that a previously unwanted photo sees the light, so to speak, I dont want to have to repeat the process.
As you can see, the collection continues on with subsections that allow you to track your progress in editing, and adjustments. A cool feature is the inclusion of sections based on your ISO, allowing you to quickly find images that may need extra noise reduction.
The next step is the process of keywording. (put anyone to sleep yet?, see I told you it wasn’t a fun process)
This is the point in which you can tag images (in lightroom) with adjectives that allow you to quickly find and sort all of your images. Eventually, when this is all done, and I merge my Morocco catalog with my Main lightroom catalog, this will be an important aspect of finding my images. Also, it may be helpful to view all of my images tagged with “coffee” in the future- from morocco and elsewhere.
Although Lightroom makes is very easy and pretty intuitive to achieve this process, the fact remains that it takes time to do all this, and that has been what I have been up to recently. After this is all done (finished keywording and metadata this afternoon) I am moving onto the next stage : picking out my keepers!
I hope that this is informative, and helpful at the very least to any fellow photographers that read this. Check out Beardsworth’s blog for other helpful and insightful tips on managing your dital assets, weather they are music files or photographs.
If your a photographer – and your not using Lightroom (to at least organize your images) – your crazy! You need to check this software out. It will rock your world.
More soon!
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