Faster digital workflow sought

Agreed....but you don't massage them all....do you? I look at mine as
thumbnails and copy the promising ones to a new folder. Those I open and
look at. Only a few need to be perfected.....and still its time consuming.

"Jimmy" wrote in message
...

"Derek Fountain" wrote in message
...

100 photos per hour? That's one every 36 seconds! 36 seconds isn't time
to
find a subject, consider it, set the camera and get the shot.

I'm a professional photographer. I shoot a lot of weddings and other
events. 500 photos is pretty much the standard delivery expected from an
eight-hour wedding these days. I used to deliver 120 proofs for each
wedding, but clients now simply insist upon more.

I also shoot models' portfolios. Shooting only once every three minutes
would be rather lame. Imagine having a model pose for three minutes
between
pictures! Thirty seconds is a long, long time between photos during any
action sequence.

This weekend I covered a local festival in our town. I shot about 600 shots in
6 hours to get photos of as many kids and adults as I could. I do this as my
volunteer job for every town event.

Later, I edit out the duplicates and obvious problems, winding up with 385 good
ones that I correct, crop and otherwise make as good as I can. I then burn them
to CDs, with copies being placed in our library and historical society. I used
JASC Paint Shop Photo Album 5 to make auto run slide shows that can be run
either on the computer or on a DVD.

These CDs are very popular. Many times these photos are the only pictures some
of these people ever have taken. Particularly for the older generation, it may
be the last photo of them. I've had to make prints for memorial services.

Anyway, 100 shots an hour isn't at all out of line, depending on the
circumstances. I do most of my editing in PaintShop Pro 9.0. It goes pretty
fast once I get into the mode. I sure don't try to do it all in one sitting
though.

Earle Rich
Mont Vernon, NH

"Jimmy" wrote in message
...

"Derek Fountain" wrote in message
...

100 photos per hour? That's one every 36 seconds! 36 seconds isn't time
to
find a subject, consider it, set the camera and get the shot.

I'm a professional photographer. I shoot a lot of weddings and other
events. 500 photos is pretty much the standard delivery expected from an
eight-hour wedding these days. I used to deliver 120 proofs for each
wedding, but clients now simply insist upon more.

I also shoot models' portfolios. Shooting only once every three minutes
would be rather lame. Imagine having a model pose for three minutes
between
pictures! Thirty seconds is a long, long time between photos during any
action sequence.


The weddings we've shot, we've delivered about 4-600 images between the two
of us. That's about 30-40 images per hour worked, each.
Oddly, when I work with models, I seem to keep up the same pace, whether
working with film or digital. Of course, I don't keep the model posed for
that long in between shots, there has to be time to move lights, discuss
poses and themes, costume changes, etc.

--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com

I'm a professional photographer. I shoot a lot of weddings and other
events. 500 photos is pretty much the standard delivery expected from an
eight-hour wedding these days. I used to deliver 120 proofs for each
wedding, but clients now simply insist upon more.

500 at a wedding? I rarely did 100. I think you need to be more
discriminating before pressing the button.

Derek Fountain wrote:
Jimmy wrote:


It takes me hours and hours to edit my photos. I shoot around 100
pictures per hour at most events, copying them to a picture bank, then
uploading them to my computer, renaming and rotating, then writing the
unedited files to CD for safety.


100 photos per hour? That's one every 36 seconds! 36 seconds isn't time to
find a subject, consider it, set the camera and get the shot. My guess is
that you're doing what I used to do when I got into digital photography -
put the camera in auto mode and reel off lots and lots of shots in the hope
that one or two of them might look OK. You can do that with a digital
camera, but it works a lot better if you get to know the tool and go out
with the intention of taking nothing but decent photos with it. One photo
every 3 minutes makes a much smaller pile to filter through!

While I agree that paying some attention to composition, lighting, and
other 'artistic' considerations is important, so is getting the picture,
which may be of breaching whales, birds flying overhead, or other events
of a transitory and unpredictable nature. That is a different type of
photography, and requires a different approach.



Then I go through each image in ADSee, deleting the crocodiles, and
straightening and cropping the good pictures, plus adjusting exposure and
color balance. That done, I select the best 500 to tweak in Photoshop.


You select the best 500?! Five-freaking-hundred?! What the hell do you do
with them? Who do you get to sit and look at them all? It sounds like you
spend your whole day out with your eye stuck to the viewfinder, then
actually enjoy the experience back home in front of a monitor!

Here's my tip: if you go for a day out, aim to end up with maybe 25 photos,
each of which is a nice shot, that tells its part of the story. You might
need to take 100 to get 25 "keepers", but the ratio will come down with
practise and experience. Work on the basis of quality, not quantity.

The main utility of digital photography is being able to take as many
shots as you want without worrying about the cost. When photographing
children, or animals, just to name two subjects, taking a lot of shots
is about the only way to be sure of getting good pictures that aren't
'posed'. In the end, it depends largely on what you WANT from your
pictures. Sometimes, the purpose is to document a process. Not all
photography needs to be art.

Randall Ainsworth wrote:
I'm a professional photographer. I shoot a lot of weddings and other
events. 500 photos is pretty much the standard delivery expected from an
eight-hour wedding these days. I used to deliver 120 proofs for each
wedding, but clients now simply insist upon more.


500 at a wedding? I rarely did 100. I think you need to be more
discriminating before pressing the button.

A wedding needs 10 pictures. More is just ripping off the customer.

Randall Ainsworth wrote:
I'm a professional photographer. I shoot a lot of weddings and other
events. 500 photos is pretty much the standard delivery expected from an
eight-hour wedding these days. I used to deliver 120 proofs for each
wedding, but clients now simply insist upon more.


500 at a wedding? I rarely did 100. I think you need to be more
discriminating before pressing the button.

A wedding needs 10 pictures. More is just ripping off the customer.

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:12:14 -0400, "Jimmy"
wrote:

It takes me hours and hours to edit my photos. I shoot around 100 pictures
per hour at most events, copying them to a picture bank, then uploading them
to my computer, renaming and rotating, then writing the unedited files to CD
for safety.



Then I go through each image in ADSee, deleting the crocodiles, and
straightening and cropping the good pictures, plus adjusting exposure and
color balance. That done, I select the best 500 to tweak in Photoshop.



It's a long process. Would those who think they have a better way of doing
things please share their workflow with the group on this forum?



Go to a site like:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php

They are professional photojournlists, and deal with that kind of
issue all the time.

Use Photoshops scripts. Once you have them setup its automated.

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:12:14 -0400, "Jimmy"
wrote:

It takes me hours and hours to edit my photos. I shoot around 100 pictures
per hour at most events, copying them to a picture bank, then uploading them
to my computer, renaming and rotating, then writing the unedited files to CD
for safety.



Then I go through each image in ADSee, deleting the crocodiles, and
straightening and cropping the good pictures, plus adjusting exposure and
color balance. That done, I select the best 500 to tweak in Photoshop.



It's a long process. Would those who think they have a better way of doing
things please share their workflow with the group on this forum?

Use Photoshops scripts. Once you have them setup its automated.

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:12:14 -0400, "Jimmy"
wrote:

It takes me hours and hours to edit my photos. I shoot around 100 pictures
per hour at most events, copying them to a picture bank, then uploading them
to my computer, renaming and rotating, then writing the unedited files to CD
for safety.



Then I go through each image in ADSee, deleting the crocodiles, and
straightening and cropping the good pictures, plus adjusting exposure and
color balance. That done, I select the best 500 to tweak in Photoshop.



It's a long process. Would those who think they have a better way of doing
things please share their workflow with the group on this forum?