In front of the MacBook, at home, shooting done:
My typical newspaper Jpeg workflow is: Cards out of camera, into card reader plugged into my Macbook, which automatically launches Photo Mechanic. Hit the button to ingest all the images shot. Now, while I’ve been shooting, I’ve been taking a few seconds during and after the shoot to hit the “protect” button on the camera for images I like the look of. When these pop up in Photo Mechanic, they are already tagged on the contact sheet, so I just hit the key to isolate them, recheck for focus, eyes open, best expression, exposure and, if I’ve got the selection right, they get a colour code (green) which gives a belt and braces selection. I will still look at the others in the shoot, in case I’ve missed any other good selects. Any that aren’t quite there I just untag and look either side on the contact sheet for an alternative.
Once I’ve made my selection, these are captioned according to BigPaper needs, job by job. Trust me, captioning is a very nitpicky task! Once you have the blanket one in place, most images then need customising, as they will feature different people, actions, or other details - picture spreads, beloved of local newspapers, will usually need every last image customised... I hit the key that isolates all “green” images and they are all then opened up in Lightroom, getting any small crops, exposure or tonal adjustments I think needed. I’m not supposed to do this, but having gained a lot of digital experience over the last few years, I firmly believe there is no such thing as a print-ready image straight out of the camera. This isn’t an absolute, but I still want my images to look the best I can make them. Having seen the butchery sometimes carried out at the production stages, if it’s got my byline on it I at least want it to look its best before it then gets mullered…
Between me and the cameras, I don’t expect to change the exposure much – Once the images are in Lightroom I am disappointed if any need more than +/- 0.3 of a stop - but I will move the shadows, highlights and midtones around a little bit. I try not to crop too much, either, but it’s useful to be able to do a trim after the event. Jpegs otherwise don't get too much adjustment, nor will they put up with it. They get exported to a SEND folder as smaller file-size Jpegs, about 70 on the sliding scale, which gives between 1.4 - 2.0mb images, These are still plenty quality-wise but much easier and quicker to send. Photo Mechanic is pointed at the SEND folder, and the FTP system built into PM used to send them over the ‘net.
If I’m in a tearing hurry to get a job away for deadline (usually a Tuesday for me) then that will be the job I edit in Photo Mechanic first, and then just that job goes over to Lightroom; crop, exposure, tone - again, with restraint - but these might get exported as even lower quality Jpegs - perhaps 60 - because they are often being sent from the car via 3G. Even these are still 1mb+ images. Just occasionally, for very quick transmission, I downsize the exports to 6 million pixel, 800kb pics. The beauty of Lightroom (and Aperture) is that these are new versions of untouched originals. Need a bigger copy? Just export it larger next time.
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With a couple of brief halts to make drinks/tea and a quick snack (remember, nothing but a Latte and water during the day), I finally finish FTP’ing the last pic at 18.30...
That’s before I start charging batteries, cleaning lenses for the same again tomorrow.
I Shot 218 images across the 8 jobs, and actually filed 48 from these. This included the requested ‘Page of Pics” from one of the Junior School jobs and what I took to be another page+ request (“Get as many pix as possible”) from the Beer Festival. I’ve recently arrived at a rough estimate, that each image takes (a conservative) two minutes to select, caption and physically send – that doesn’t include my personal extra step into Lightroom, though I don’t faff much once I’m there for obvious reasons! – so 48 images takes 100 minutes to deal with. The sending could be run in the background as soon as the Lightroom export is finished but, once exported, it really does pay to try to run your eyes over the images again to make sure the data is OK before they go. If you're sending via 3G from the car, you're committed to sitting there whilst they copy over, anyway.
Additionally, my total mileage on that Friday was 62 miles. The trip computer in the car shows my average speed as 23mph. The distance to the first job was about 10 miles. The distance home from the last job was about 16 miles, so a total mileage “between jobs” of 36 miles. Even in a small group of towns, at the average indicated that’s 90 minutes+ of my day just driving between locations...
So in a theoretical seven- hour shift (lunch, remember – haha), well over 3 hours is used up driving and editing what’s shot. That’s without actually physically shooting, in as creative and interesting ways as I can, eight jobs involving real, ordinary people, at seven different locations…
And the next, penultimate piece: a few notes about camera settings and why, even if time-stressed, I will sometimes shoot raw...
And the next, penultimate piece: a few notes about camera settings and why, even if time-stressed, I will sometimes shoot raw...
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