923 M9 pics to process...

Ahh ... you forgot turn on the autofocus and matrix metering again huh!

Dear Keith,

Damn, that must have been it. And the autocomposition...

Exposure for steam over hot springs is surprisingly demanding.

Cheers,

R.
 
Take your own advice Roger. Shoot as if it were MF or LF, you'd not have to contend with this backlog if you had.
 
As said: Edit. But editing at the back of the camera isn't a good idea, risks card read errors.
The other key: presets and batch processing. Save the fine tuning only for the best.
Still, it is a lot of work. Digital puts control back in our hands but it also means we are the lab now too.
 
I shoot between 1500 and 2500 per wedding, and I find that if I assume everything is garbage and then edit in "good" photos it takes me much less time. I also try really hard to just look at the photo as good or bad and not reflect on the experience while taking the photo or any other influences. Like Michiel said above, about 1000 an hour for editing. I then make a collection in lightroom with those and then as I go through to correct I will edit out photos that don't make the cut for what ever reason. I also find that sometimes in the evening when I do this a Gimlet helps =😛
 
Ezzie said:
Take your own advice Roger. Shoot as if it were MF or LF, you'd not have to contend with this backlog if you had.
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Dear Ezzie,

Thing is, there's a big difference between 'pretty pictures' and illustration -- and these are illustrations as well as (I hope) pretty pictures. If you're illustrating a magazine or web article the pics have to tell a story.

One of these stories starts at the Mediterranean shoreline and ends at the Atlantic shoreline having crossed Pyrenean passes up to 2200 metres (call it 7000 feet) in the meantime. In a 1972 Land Rover.

Another story deals with shopping in a supermarket in a foreign country where you're very shaky on the language (Spanish and Catalan).

Yet another story deals with a 'wild' (non-commercial) hot-spring spa half an hour from the nearest road, inaccessible even by Land Rover: the path is a foot wide at one point, with a 5-metre dropoff on one side and a 45 degree bank on the other, quite apart from a couple of places where the path drops 2 metres in a metre and a half (you have to treat the rocks like steps).

And so forth.

Cheers,

R.
 
Forgive me, I didn't know Land Rovers were involved. It's a wonder you didn't end up with more! 😉

1974 SIII 109" FFW
1954 SI 86"
 
A few weeks ago I shot my first wedding for some friends. Took 230 photos during hairdressing, preparation, church and the photo location. Yesterday it took about four hours to reduce them to 130 photos including the first tests what corrections might look good. I want to reduce them to 100 photos were I only apply some basic corrections and about 20 where I do a lot more work on.
So most work is choosing the right ones.
 
After a typical shoot i delete immediately what i do not like at first sight and I repeat this procedure the 2nd day .. delete what i do not like on second sight.
I repeat this procedure for 5-6 days in a row and can assure you there is very little left to proces after that 😉.

In general i only keep what is at least as good as anything i shot before. If it does not give me the WOW feeling it is of to the bin, no backups nothing. It does not get better over time.
But i do not work on commision or shoot weddings, so my procedure is probably of little help to you.
 
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Work is hard 🙂

That's about 2 rolls per day, doesn't seem excessive. How about dealing with the back-log with a laptop while you're traveling, Roger, isn't that what digital is about ?

Roland.
 
Roger,

I'm quite guilty of generating many files for the digital darkroom. As was mentioned, sort first, with pick/reject or assign #'s. In LR, you can assign while watching all as a slideshow (p, x, u for unpick, 1-5), cursors work to go back during slideshow. Assign a keyword for each article topic, or use the Collection function. Will there also be a general photo album in addition to the photos used as illustrative support for the stories (nice for those fantastic shots that might not quite add to the story)? The copy / paste function (with selection of what actions to copy), and / or creating develop presets helps. Seems your stories will drive the need for images, a small subset of what was shot, so it makes sense to work the stories and use the images as library stock from which to draw. All the best - after many many hours in LR, I've got a long way to go...
 
I let time pass before looking at the images and then only import those with potential into lightroom. Then, after some time in lightroom, I delete the ones that aren't as good as I thought.
 
Like Michel and Bill, I usually average about 1500 per wedding (for about 8-10 hours work).

I load them all into LightRoom. I rifle through them "tagging" keepers (*****) only. I then filter on the number of stars (*****) and I begin editing those. I usually end up with about 300 photos give or take 10-20.

That said, I'm slowly becoming more and more interested in determining if there's actually any "savings" (from a time perspective.. and, in the end, money.. because time is money.. apparently 😀 😀 ) by shooting digital over film. People will say you save because you have an endless supply of images that you can capture on your SD or CF cards.. but look at the time it takes to edit.. it's EXTREMELY time consuming. Developing film, yes, it too can be time consuming if you develop your own B&W but if you're a C-41 shooter.. drop off the film at the lab and they can take care of it for you.. usually for about $5 / roll tops.

I have my doubts that there is actually a savings to be had by shooting digitally - one day I'll do a comparison via a "typical" wedding for me and that will be a deciding factor in continuing to shoot digital...

Cheers,
Dave
 
@Double Negative. I got back at the end of last week. Weds/Thu I'll be in Brittany. Sunday I leave for photokina, from which I shall return with a ton more pics and lots of articles to write. If it don't happen now, it ain't gonna happen for weeks.

@JBorger: Quite a lot of illustrative shots don't have a WOW factor, and even then, I'm not always the best judge of my own pics. I like to give editors a choice of informative shots, mostly pretty.

@ Roland: When I'm driving & shooting all day, I am in no state to work on pics in the evening. Fod and drink are nearer the mark.

@ederek: Yes, the 'pictures as library stock' is pretty much what I do. After processing & saving & backing up the lot, I then copy (not move) to sub-folders for the stories. That way I can go back and hunt out more, and also use the same pic in more than one place.

Thanks for all the ideas and advice.

Cheers,

R.
 
Beware trying to use film workflow for digital. It's different.

Long term: Use presets. When you process an image in full sun on a blue sky day, make a preset. Likewise for any processing you make regularly. Soon you will have a library of one or two click changes that process lots of your images to your own style. You can kick start the process by getting a load of free presets (OnOne does a free bundle) that will change items such as light balance, vignetting and so on. (Ignore the horrendous over-processed examples you may see; you do not need to follow that route).

Short term: What I do with Aperture or Lightroom is start at the first image and flick through until I reach one I want to process and work on it. Lift that processing (make a preset if it is typical of the pictures you take). Stamp your processing onto similar others as you go, tweaking if necessary. You most likely have a few in a row that need similar processing. You have 900 photos. Maybe a couple of 100 you want to process? I bet there are little more than a dozen sets of conditions. You don't need to work on each one, just one example from each set of similar images and transfer.
 
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1. Edit in your head before even pressing the shutter.
2. Choose photos in Bridge like on contact prints.
3. Proceed with PP of the chosen photos.
4. Use presets.

Every step is important, but first is the most important. 😉
 
Double Negative said:
I guess it's still quicker than souping and scanning that many images... Though I suppose with film you might have taken fewer shots. 😛

If they're illustrative in nature rather than artistic, say (where all the little details matter) - then batch processing is your friend!
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That's why I always used to shoot slides. VERY quick to sort! I'd probably have shot 10-20 rolls (1/2 to 2/3 as many pics) but processing time would have been limited to dropping them off atthe lab and then picking them up again. Of course, even 10 rolls is £50-100 saved.

Also, with slides, I'd only scan the pics I was going to submit. Well, actually, in the good old days, that was the publisher's problem too!

Still not sure about batches, though. Sunlight, overcast, indoor, outdoor, tungsten, sodium vapour, river running through forest, mountainscapes, close-ups, mixed light...

Cheers,

R.
 
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Roger Hicks said:
Still not sure about batches, though. Sunlight, overcast, indoor, outdoor, tungsten, sodium vapour, river running through forest, mountainscapes, close-ups, mixed light...

Cheers,

R.
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Lightroom is designed to enable you to make these themes into batches and process them together.
 
This is quite a few hours in Lightroom. How does anyone who shoots 100-200 pics per day ever manage to process the shots?
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This is actually the main reason I still shoot film. If I shot a hundred pictures per day on medium format, I'd have to worry about the bank manager before workflow...
 
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