Betty LaRue Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Two days ago, I left on a shooting expedition. I worked in the city for awhile, then took off to the countryside in hopes of getting shots of ripe wheat fields and harvest. That didn't work well. Late freezes damaged the wheat in our area, followed by no rain, then rain came in torrents. The couple of wheat fields I saw was mostly laying over and uncutable. The rest had already been cut for hay. I did get some farm shots, and some grain elevators. All in all, I was gone three hours, took 65-70 images. Culled them then began working up what remained. Except for a few exceptions, i usually only develop two of a scene. Sometimes only one. LR, on to PS, sometimes dodging and burning and using layers. About 10 hours of intense computer work over parts of 3 days gave me 38 images for upload. That's culling, developing, checking at 100% several times and keywording. So for 13 hours including 70 miles of driving, that's my product. I know I am making this arduous, but that's how I roll. Batch editing doesn't work for me since I only have a few of the same scene. And I'll confess. I don't have a clue how to batch edit. So it is one by one by one... Now you know why my port is so small. How do you roll? Betty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Nacke Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Betty, I have images on Alamy that I spent over 200 hours prepping. That is why my portfolio is smaller. I don't "roll" I rock (could not resist, Sorry all) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Betty, I have images on Alamy that I spent over 200 hours prepping. That is why my portfolio is smaller. I don't "roll" I rock (could not resist, Sorry all) Lol! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Your workflow sounds very normal to me, Betty. I don't see how you could use batch editing when you're covering a variety of subjects in different lighting. There is a lot of work involved with digital stock. For me, that's both the good news and the bad news. I mean the work ends up being both the punishment and the reward. As far as capturing wheat fields go, when you deal with Mother Nature, Mother Nature is in change. Do you want to be more in control? More pies, less fields. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Your workflow sounds very normal to me, Betty. I don't see how you could use batch editing when you're covering a variety of subjects in different lighting. There is a lot of work involved with digital stock. For me, that's both the good news and the bad news. I mean the work ends up being both the punishment and the reward. As far as capturing wheat fields go, when you deal with Mother Nature, Mother Nature is in change. Do you want to be more in control? More pies, less fields. Trouble is, Ed, that if I bake the pies to photograph the pies, I eat the pies. That doesn't help my weight maintainence plan. I love pie and won't quit sneaking slices until it is gone. My Achilles heel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Ramsay Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 'Late freezes damaged the wheat in our area, followed by no rain, then rain came in torrents. The couple of wheat fields I saw was mostly laying over and uncutable.' Surely that was a story for your local news outlets / agricultural publications, wasn't it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I try not to spend more than a couple of minutes/ images in processing. The returns don't justify it. I have a preset in LR and let auto tone do its thing which is fine most of the time. So I'd expect to get through a shoot of a couple of hundred in a morning. Always JPEG although I have started experimenting with RAW at high ISO as I can get them a bit sharper. But I haven't braved QC with any of that yet. Out for 30 days at the moment, as i have been for most of a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Bell Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 My work flow is similar to yours Betty including the view at 100% many time over. Despite that I have been put in the clink again as from 8th. That makes THREE times since end of February. I am becoming rather disillusioned with it all. Thinking of throwing the Fuji gear and going to something different. It all hinges around RAW image quality out of the camera. Sorry to go off topic. Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Richmond Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I only shoot in RAW, usually at 100 or 200 ISO to keep noise low. I do my initial sift of images in Canon's DPP program, batch applying sharpening to check how well images sharpen up but no other processing. Because DPP uses individual windows that can be synchronised it's easy to select the best shot from a series of similars. Selected shots are then tagged and copied into a folder for import into Lightroom. The initial sift takes about an hour for every 60 images but ensures that only those images worth processing go through to the next, more intensive stage. In Lightroom the only batch processing I do is to set the Lens profile, sharpening to zero, and a small amount of Vibrance, Clarity and Saturation. After that it's treating each photo as an individual for exposure, contrast curves, black and white point setting, and dodging and burning using the adjustment brush and/or the graduated filters. The final stage is the 100% viewing to check and correct for dust bunnies and Chromatic aberration. I can still discard an image at this stage if I don't think it's good enough. Including keywording I can process about 6 - 10 images per hour - but I'm not doing anything fancy with the images, just basic preparation for export to JPEG. I'm currently uploading about 40 images a week so the whole process isn't too onerous in terms of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 It's not just you and RAW, Allan, i looked at a recent zoom from a 2012 sub at 100%. There's no way on Earth i would submit something that noisy now. The bar has definitely lowered. I never seem to have to change curves or set points. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southpole Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I shot Raw on Fuji and have no problems with QC my editing skills are a bit of trail and error (also colourblind) I seem to get a fair amount of views 104 yesterday very few zooms 1 yesterday about 5 sales a month on average Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Gaffen Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Weather plays quite a large part of when I go out on photo-shoots. When a "good sunny day" is predicted", I make good use of my freedom pass, travelling into the City to find an area to explore. At the moment I am exploring the City of London, as it has much history to offer, like ancient lanes and Churches, combined with rapidly growing modern architecture (Skyscrapers). Batch processing is not really an option for me, so like most, I spend many hours processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. I find I am using a higher percentage of images, than I used to, don't know if that means I am becoming less selective, although this does not mean I am submitting more "similars". it just means I photograph my subjects from different angles/locations/places/views. Sometimes, I will spend several hours on one image, but not so often, these days! I always shoot in Raw, process Tiff's in Photoshop and the last thing I do is convert them to jpg's. I only use Canon Digital SLR's with full size sensors at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Brook Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Aside from personal work, I always research shots first (and, in fact I do for personal work as well, but differently). I want to see if anyone else has done it, and whether I can do it differently, and surprisingly uncover shot after shot that nobody has bothered to take. I have one particularly underwhelming image, not on trend, not business/lifestyle/concept, a bit boring, a bit clumsy - but it has sold 7 times over the past 12 months and is, on one search, currently at 18 (out of 232,894) at G. I'm not proud of it, but it has generated its own workflow: a small series on the same theme that has taken me a couple of weeks because now I am doing it with CGI. And the setup that I have created can be used for a raft of other images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Morrison Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Out for 30 days at the moment, as i have been for most of a year. And you're recommending your workflow? My way of working is to check weather forecasts and create a schedule and itinerary. I don't rush from one location to another (like I used to); I try to find the full photographic potential of wherever I happen to be. And if something good happens, I'll tear up the schedule and go with plan B... And I don't batch-edit... any more than I would 'batch-write'... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Out for 30 days at the moment, as i have been for most of a year. And you're recommending your workflow? I'm not recommending it, I'm answering a question. It hasn't changed. QC has. How else to explain 6 pages of green followed by fail after fail? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Morrison Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Out for 30 days at the moment, as i have been for most of a year. And you're recommending your workflow? I'm not recommending it, I'm answering a question. It hasn't changed. QC has. How else to explain 6 pages of green followed by fail after fail? I don't know whether the QC criteria have changed, though nothing convinces me that they have. When I started at Alamy, and keep failing QC, I didn't fret whether QC had 'changed'; I checked my workflow - one element at a time - until my pix passed... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 When I started I didn't keep failing QC. That's my point. I had a handful of fails in 5 years. Anyway I think we've been here before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Kuta Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 A couple of Lightroom features that have eased my workflow (probably old news to a lot of folks): - in Develop mode, hit J to see your highlight and shadow issues. I just leave it turned on all the time. - to check for dust bunnies, use the Spot Removal tool, and underneath the image, check "Visualize Spots". I crank it up all the way. I no longer view at 100% to find dust, just to fix the spots that show up. IMO, it doesn't take long to learn what dust bunnies look like without zooming in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gervais Montacute Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 How do you roll? Betty Betty I tend to not Roll much at all unless I get some sales as an incentive. This month I have actually had some very good sales and this then makes me start adding/taking photos again. I'm too tied up having to write music to give photography the time it deserves or I would like to. With the summer fast approaching I expect I will go out and take random photos as usual. Lightroom 6 basically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 My workflow is similar to yours Betty. Almost always shoot raw, sometimes take multiple shots at slightly different exposures to get the best looking histogram, and cull the remainder in camera. Look through the shots in camera on an evening when further culling occurs. Next step is LR and keywording, anything not critically sharp discarded. Then on to PS, almost always use layers, and have some auto setups, that I may or may not fiddle with. I occasionally use a couple of raw conversions at different exposures or noise control settings and combine in PS. You can kill sky noise without hurting the detail that way. Tend to waste loads of time procrastinating over a series of mediocre shots trying to select the best when I should really just bin the lot. Always check at 100% usually with a temporary contrast enhancing filter to highlight any marks.. (I have on a couple of occasions inadvertently left my filter in place when uploading. It hasn't caused a failure to date, but I always delete when I spot the mistake.) It takes a while, but, this is a retirement activity for me and it fills the time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dustydingo Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 And I don't batch-edit... any more than I would 'batch-write'... I must admit I'm often surprised at the number of contributors who seem to batch process as a matter of course. As Betty does, I spend varying amounts of time on each image, determined by a host of factors within the image, and truly believe that effort is oft rewarded by the licensing of an image that may not have otherwise caught a buyer's eye. dd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dyn Llun Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 You have to get it right in the camera (the most important stage), then the rest is straightforward. Use the very best gear (especially lenses) and that takes many of the problems away. I do almost no PP. Minor tweaking, no more than I will do in the darkroom given a good negative. I learned to get things right in the camera way, way long ago and it still holds good today. With the bulk of my serious work being on 10" x 8" colour (£25 a click for film and processing), I still have to. This philosophy I carry over to all aspects of my work and it holds for digi work too. Funnily enough I wrote about this on my blog the other day: http://peteslandscape.blogspot.co.uk/ "It's photography. not rocket science'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Brook Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Get it right in camera? You mean like this guy, Pete? http://nickknight.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dyn Llun Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Most of the photographers who are constantly changing technique and undertaking a lot of PP on this forum are doing so, according to them, to squeeze past Alamy QC. (How many lately are complaining about being in the sin bin?). Their problems are not caused by their lack of ability, far from it, but mostly, I think by using equipment that just about 'does the job', but sadly, not always. Of course there are photographers that undertake huge amounts of PP and manipulation for 'creative effect' but you can bet that they also have first class equipment and have honed their basic techniques first and worked up from there. Nothing much has changed here from film and darkroom days. All the photographers who enjoyed extensive darkroom manipulation also had very sound basic techniques which they just expanded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Sometimes I have a basically really nice image. But the sky, full of fluffy clouds, is pale. So I create a layer, lower brightness of the image, brush out everything but the sky. Add a touch of saturation, and the image is now more attractive. This is just an example. Each image has its own need. Some are good with only minor exposure/contrast/vibrance adjustments. Could the image be ok without that adjustment? Yes. Will it have a better chance of grabbing the eye of a buyer with the adjustment? Yes. As long as I feel this way, I am compelled to put in the extra work. This is the reason I'll always shoot Raw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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