As these two exercises can be combined with others in this section I have decided to write about them both together.
For both exercises I need to plan and then put into practise a work flow that works for me.
My starting point is to read the section on work flow in 'the digital SLR handbook by MICHAEL FREEMAN' further details open this book are written about in the page on reading materials.
I have taken the photographs for the second exercise first although I still intend to document the exercises in order I just happened to be going on a day trip to London and it seemed too good an opportunity not to make use of.
Well its time to start the first exercise and here is my work flow, it will be interesting to see how I might need to adjust this as I go along.
Exercise one
This needs to be a portrait session and limited in time.
work flow pattern
- Find a location
- Check camera, are the batteries charged is there room on the memory cards, are the lenses cleaned and does the flash gun have batteries. finally make sure there is space on the hard drive or you have enough disks/ memory sticks to house the new photographs.
- Camera settings, I always shoot in raw and jpeg, but will i need a tripod and remote trigger, think about the shutter speed and white balance likely to be needed.
- Take the shots, check the poses and lighting looks ok, time this section to about 10 to 15 minutes
- Upload to computer
- Delete any really bad ones (out of focus, too dark bright etc)
- Give the ones left a number
- process these ones
- final selection process choose the best two to print use on website etc.
- Save on external hard drive and a disk labelled with correct title and date.
- Print photographs or complete upload.
So far as location was concerned I decided to use my home studio and bribed my mum to pose for me, I told her it would only be a 10 to 15 minute shoot and she was more than happy to help me out.
I had already metered the room and set the camera up with the correct settings in this case it was F11 shutter speed 125/s iso 100 and white balance set to flash.
I proceeded to take 30 photographs opting to take close up facial photographs and then just about from waist up.
The photographs were then uploaded to the computer and I checked through them showing my mum at the same time as she was interested in the whole process. There was a few photographs that I knew straight away I didn't like so I deleted those and finally settled on the ones I wanted to label then work on before making my final selection.
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| Mum 1 |
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| Mum 2 |
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| Mum 3 |
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| Mum 4 |
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| Mum 5 |
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| Mum 6 |
From the six above I finally decided on Mum 2 and 3 as the ones I would use, I should add here that I am sure my mum won't mind me revealing her age to be nearly 73 as I don't think she looks anywhere near to that, these are the best photographs I have taken of her so far and she was couldn't quite believe herself how good she looked.
The final two
In terms of how the work flow went overall I thought it went well, I have never had to rate photographs before and it took me a while to work out how to do that but once I had worked it out it was really quite straightforward, the next thing I want to try to work out is how to embed photographs with the information I know who to print them as a contact sheet with the information underneath but I don't know any other way at the moment so I guess its back to the reading books for me.
for the second part of the exercise I needed to do a less structured shoot, My husband was given tickets to the London eye as a birthday present and we finally decided to go (it only took from Feb to Nov for us to go), and the day we chose could not have been better for the actual trip however it was very bright making conditions for photographing more challenging.
I decided to follow the work flow pattern I had used before but with the added step of reviewing my photographs 'on locatation' and deleting some of them as I went.
I took about 80 to 90 photographs during the course of the day but on uploading them to the computer I choose about six or seven that I really liked. I noticed when viewing them on the computer screen that I could see reflections of people In the pods on the eye and have made a mental note that the next time I am doing anything like this I need to pack a polarising filter.
Below are my favourite four photographs
The settings used for photograph one was 18mm focal length, iso 200 f10 shutter speed 1/400's white balance was direct sunlight.
The settings used for photograph two was the same as for photograph one
The settings used for photograph three was the same as for photograph one
The settings used for photograph four was 200mm focal length, iso 200 shutter speed 1/320's f11
again with a white balance of direct sunlight.
The post production I used was the same for all four photographs I opened them in raw checked the exposure and made any small adjustments to clipped areas and adjusted the clarity, I then opened them in elements and cleaned the dust spots from the photographs (my sensor had dust on it but has now been cleaned) then adjusted levels flattened the image then used the unsharp mask, before renaming the photographs and resizing them to use in my blog, the only other process I did was on the second photograph I cropped it as I felt there was a bit too much sky in it.
My overall thoughts on using a work flow rather than just taking photographs and then down loading them in a hap hazard way are that its less time consuming overall to be organised its easier to find the photographs looking back for them and by developing a routine you don't miss any thing out.
