Arts and Photography tips and guide

For experienced photographers, digital photography is a creative process that allows them expression and freedom. For the newer photographer, photography can be full of surprises and challenges. Although it can look simple at the outset and feel as such for the expert, for many it is something in between.

If you're just getting started in digital, then workflow can be extremely important. Often, you can set out into the field for photos with editing software not even a consideration, or a second camera battery left unpurchased or forgotten at home. I can understand that many people are lost when first putting all of the components together and am even sure that you can tell your own story of your first few weeks with your new digital camera. Taking pictures until your memory is completely full happens, but knowing what to do about it is something else.

Choosing Your Format for Better Workflow

Once you have yourself set up with both extra batteries and additional memory cards, you're ready to consider some of the formats that will greatly impact your workflow. Understanding how you will use the final photograph is the key to choosing the proper format, but often you may not be aware of that during shooting. The more prepared and intentional you are, the better results you will get.

With that being said, you'll find that shooting raw images leaves a little more leeway. Ideally, you should expose the image perfectly with custom white balance set before taking your shot. However, if I am photographing people, in order to get the full range of skin tones, I'll shoot in jpegs. Still, with raw images, we can recover up to two stops of highlighting detail in the lightroom.

When shooting in raw, we are working with a 12-bit or 14-bit file, not merely an 8-bit jpeg file. Thus, we can work more extensively without significantly reducing the image quality. Adjusting the white balance without really affecting image quality is possible, but all of this means a different way of shooting than with jpegs. At high ISOs and when not shooting portraits, overexposure is possible (without blowing out highlights). You can accomplish this by allowing your histogram to be as far to the right as possible without any important highlights being distorted. If you are shooting jpegs, then several overexposed images will not turn out well at all, so keep these format differences in mind as you shoot.

Workflow

In general, when considering workflow, you want to be aware specifically of time management and the focus of your attention. Said much more clearly, "Whatever you start, finish." As you concentrate on one task at a time, you will improve your workflow results. So first, draw a general outline of all that needs to be done, then make enough time for each task.

Specifically, don't begin importing your images late at night, thinking you'll complete the task in the morning. Working piecemeal usually increases the rate of forgetfulness and keeps you disorganized. If you know you can't finish the job within your time frame, move your images to a computer until you can give proper attention for importing, sorting, and organizing all the images.

Then, be sure to leave more than enough time for editing and adjusting your photos. Often, this block of time is extremely time intensive. Thus, allotting extra time for this task is ideal. By the time you have your finished photographs, you'll understand the workflow and then can work to improve the process even more!

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