 Screen Shot 2018-02-03 at 7.16.10 AM
Hey everyone! I have done a few blogs and videos on different portions of my process but haven't really gone through the whole thing. So just imagine that you've just gotten back from an outing of shooting and you have taken all of these great photos. You've looked at them on the back of your camera, but you need to get them off and into your computer for processing. I shoot in RAW format. But when looking at the back of your camera, you're looking at JPEGs which have been compressed and have been processed by your camera. So if you really like the photo that's on the back of your camera, you still have some work to do to make the RAW file with no corrections to look like the back of your camera. We also want to safeguard our images, make backups for safety in case of equipment failure. So now you have your SD card with all of your images on it. This is Copy 1 of your images. Let's get the images onto your computer.
Import into Lightroom
Getting the images onto my computer, I will hook up a card reader and insert my SD card. I use Adobe Lightroom to do almost all of my editing and all of my organizing. I have made a video that is a couple of years old, and it's basically how I do things now, except I don't store any of my photos on the hard drive of the computer. I keep all of my photos on an external drive. I also just copy to my external. I "don't copy as DNG." I still like the DNG, but it takes too long to convert. Everything else is basically the same. Lightroom stores everything in catalogs. I have one master catalog that has all my images through the years in it. It is stored on my main IMac computer. When I'm traveling or camping, I have
a mobile catalog that is stored on an SSD external drive so I can edit and cull photographs while I'm away. When I get back home, I can transfer those photos back to the master catalog with all my edits from my mobile computer/laptop intact. Think of the Lightroom catalog like your iTunes library. All of your images edits are kept there like all of your music on iTunes library. Notice I said all images "edits" are kept there. Your original RAW files are still on your hard drive, whether it's internal or external. Here is the link to the import video that I have on YouTube.
Importing into Lightroom
Library Module and Culling
After you have your photos in Lightroom, the culling process starts. This is choosing the best images (the ones you want to process). This can be
 Arrows and blocksArrows and blocks. Correlation of the parts. Relations.
a big job! If you say took 500 images, out of those images you'll probably only have maybe 50 at the most that are worth processing. So getting down to the 50 or 20 good photos that you want to process is culling. There are many ways to do this, and you kind of have to figure this out for yourself. But this is how I do it. I go through four or five images at a time and pick the ones I like by rating them to a "1" rating. I do this very quickly, and here is my logic for this. When you walk into a room full of people, it doesn't take but a few seconds for you to find the prettiest/most handsome in the room. Our mind's eye picks out the person in a flash and will also find the best photo in a flash. Now after going through the photos, I have knocked out the 500 number to about 100 real quick. Then if I need to I'll do it again and rate a 2 to the best photo and I have knocked the images down to 25. I can process those photos and then I can pick all of the unrated photos and delete them. By doing this you will keep the number of useless photos down and keep the speed of your computer up. Now, I don't get rid of everything. If I have photos with family or friends in them, I usually keep them. But the rest of the unrated photos are deleted. I don't need 50 shots of the same tree that I will never use taking up space on my computer. One or two will do. Here is a video that I made a couple of years ago on the library module and my culling process.
Library Module and Culling
Processing (Five-Step Tango)
 tango-party-design-poster-vector-illustration_10083-26
My processing procedure has not changed in many years. I use a process called the five-step Tango that I hijacked from a photographer/teacher, Jack Davis, a long time ago, and it works well for me. I usually take less than five minutes on most photos to process unless I'm doing a portrait or a composite that will take longer when I bring it into Photoshop. Some people really get into this portion of the workflow process and that's great. But for me, the least amount of time I spend on the computer after a shoot the better. I have a couple of videos on processing that I will link here also. Here is the link to the YouTube videos.
Five Step Tango
Lightroom Develop Module Part 1
Lightroom Develop Module Part 2
Exporting Photos
 fb-art
Now that you have your photos processed, what next? How do you share what you have done so far? In the film era, you sent your film away or you processed it yourself and had prints made. Today you have many options. You can share with family and friends many ways through the internet. Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, 500px are just some of the ways you can share your images. What about prints? What about Canvas? Putting your photos into calendars, cups, stickers? For me personally, most of the photos I take
 flickr
and process are shared through the internet with the above-mentioned websites and of course this site! I love to see the feedback and ratings I get from these sites and friends. I also create a couple of canvases and I do print small for my house or family and friends, usually 5x7 and 8x10's. But what about the future when I'm long gone? I think prints are one way for future generations so see my work. I've also started making books. We did this for an end-of-year project this year with my camera club, and it was pretty great. So that's one project that I will be doing yearly and maybe for large trips in the future.
Storage
I still have my original RAW photos on my SD card. I also have another copy of them on my external drive that I have been using for all of my edits. In the digital age at least two copies of your work is needed to be safe that you don't lose what you have done. So now I have to place the SD card back into my camera to use again. So I will need to format the card which will erase all of my RAW data, and I will only have one copy of my images. I have done many backup strategies in the past, and the one discussed in my last blog post Backup Strategies (check out that blog for more detail) is the one that I use now. Backing up to a cloud-based storage. That backs up my main computer and external drives. But what about my laptops and mobile devices? I also back those up to external drives every couple of weeks or so using time machine or PC's backup program. I'm real big into backups after I had my Macbook Pro have some problems with a video card and I had to have the motherboard replaced. I had just done a backup of my laptop. So when I got it back from Mac, I just ran a restore and it was back to where I left it and I didn't lose anything. By having one copy of my files at home and one on the cloud, if anything happens like a fire, a hard drive crash, or a stolen computer, I still have a backup on the cloud.
I hope this helps in some way and doesn't confuse anyone. This is my workflow process, and it works for me and for what I do in photography. I am not a professional photographer, just a photography enthusiast/hobbyist who loves to share. Keep shooting!
 _MSP6749
Hey Everyone! Hope everyone is dealing with the cold weather better than I am. As I get older the cold affects me more than it used to. Anyway, this blog is about my mobile computing solution. I have two main computers. Both are Macs: my iMac, which has a 27-inch Retna screen which is awesome, and a 15- inch Macbook Pro that is awesome! It's an older one, but I have upgraded the ram and the hard drive and it's quick and works great. To replace it would be very expensive with a new model, and then to have it broken or stolen would break my heart. And it's pretty large and heavy compared to newer models. So I wanted to get a mobile computing device that ticked three boxes. Box 1, it had to be inexpensive so if it broke or got lost not a big deal. Box 2, it had to be small and lightweight. And Box 3, it had to be able to run Lightroom so I could backup files to an external hard drive. So I went on a search for the machine that would tick those three boxes. And let me tell you that was hard, but I finally made a
 _MSP6753
decision and went with a machine that will work.
The machine I went with was the Lenovo Miix 320. It is a 2-inch laptop/tablet with 4 gb ram and 128 SSD hard drive. The operating system is Windows 10 64bit with a 10.1 display at 1920x1200 resolution. It has a detachable keyboard and can be used as a tablet. I got this machine refurbished off of Ebay, and it looks like brand new. I was a little nervous ordering it off of Ebay, but everything worked out okay. This little machine has ticked all of the boxes mentioned above.
Box 1, had to be inexpensive. My goal was to try to keep the price under $300, which is almost impossible, so that's why I went with refurbished. That actually kept the price down and brought in all kinds of computers that were available. I wanted a laptop that had a real operating system not a Crome Book that are selling for the price range that I want. This machine came in at $199! Tick!
Box 2, small and lightweight. This little 10-inch screen machine only weights 2.2 lbs. It does have a small screen, but the resolution is great and sharp. The keyboard is crunched together a bit, but it has full-sized keys and doesn't take long to get used to. It's small enough to go into a small backpack or small shoulder bag. Tick!
Box 3, has to be able to run Lightroom and make backups to an external drive. This is probably the most important box of all. The minimum ram requirement for Lightroom to run is 4 gb of ram, which this machine does have, just does. That's one of the reasons I wanted an SSD to increase the speed. It does run Lightroom. I won't be processing a lot of photos on it, but it's nice to know I can without any problems. The machine comes with 2 USB 2 ports and one USB C port, so transferring files via USB works fine. Tick!
 _MSP6755
So this machine handled all of my criteria for my mobile machine. Would I love to have a 13-inch Macbook Air? You bet. But they just cost way too much. If money weren't a factor, that's the way I would go. But it isn't. I'm really surprised at how well this little computer works. Browsing the internet and all other regular computer functions, this little computer works great. It runs Lightroom well enough to process photos, cull, and backup with no problem, although it is a little slow but not that bad. I think that this little machine will work well for what I need when I go camping or on a photo outing without worry of theft or breakage. I'm not really promoting any brand or operating system because I'm a die hard Mac guy, but for this purpose I hope this little machine will be the ticket! Only time will tell. Keep shooting!
Hey everyone! I hope the holidays were safe and full of happy memories. It's the beginning of the new year, we've had our first snow of the season, and it's very cold outside with temps in the single digits in the mornings. Very cold for Eastern North Carolina. So I have been taking this time to clean up photo files from last year, deleting the ones that I will never use and making sure the ones I keep are key worded and making sure things are backed up. Which leads me to this blog's discussion, backing up our files. In the age of film, it was a lot simpler. You could print your photo and hide away your negatives in a box somewhere and there you have it. It was backed up, your photo in one place and negative in another. Now if you had them both stored in the same place and there was a fire you were done! Lost everything. So if you were real serious about safety, you could store your negatives in another place in case of fire. Seems simple enough, but in the age of digital it seems to be a lot more confusing.
First, let's talk about mobile backup. When you're on a vacation, trip, or workshop that lasts a couple of days, how do you back up files? In film days you
didn't. You just put your roll of film in a safe spot and hoped for the best. With digital it's good to have multiple copies of your files for safety when the storage device you are using fails, and they will fail. Here is the system that works for me and how I back up my files. First, let's say I'm on a week-long workshop somewhere very remote, no internet or phone service, just beautiful landscapes everywhere. My first backup is my SD card. I have purchased enough of them to last a week. SD cards are pretty cheap now. You can get them wherever you see a sale, and before you know it you'll have quite a few. Before my trip, I format all of my cards and put them in a card case that I have labeled Day 1, 2, 3 etc... On day one I use the Day 1 card. At the end of the day, I back that card up to an external drive that I take with me, then take the card and put it in the case and put the card labeled 2 into my camera and am ready to go. I don't format anything while Im on a trip. Now I have two copies of my images from Day 1. Pretty simple and fairly inexpensive. When I travel, I have my cards in one bag and my external drive in another. The external drive doesn't need to be real fancy. You can get one for 50 bucks, give or take. If you get an SSD external drive, it will cost a little more, but for speed and durability I would recommend it. These external drives don't need to be huge. They could be 250-500 gig because they are only temporary until you get home to back them up again.
At home, back up. I have gone through so many different strategies for backing up files. I have bought external drives, put files on CDs and DVDs, and tried to mirror external drives, but I really haven't found a system that has really been easy or efficient until now. First of all, let me say that most people save way too many images. For example, if you took 20 photos of this spooky tree and you picked one image to process and used that one for making a canvas five years ago, why are you keeping the other 19 that you didn't like then and haven't used since? DELETE them! Save space, time, and effort backing them up. Now, I'm not talking about family photos. I keep all photos of family members that are halfway decent. I do. But workshop or just riding around photos, cull out the ones that you know you're not going to ever use again. What I usually do when I import photos into Lightroom after a shoot is I go through them, and the ones I like I'll give them one star. I then will go through those and cull even more, etc... At the end of the year, I'll go through all my photos, and anything without one star I get rid of. I'm probably not going to use anything after a year anyway. So that's step one. Get rid of excess.
Step two has changed over the years. Let me start by saying there are many ways to back up your files, and my way is by no means the best for everyone, just best for me so far. The most important thing is to back up your files. No mater how you do them make a back up of your art. My first backup plan was like most of your plans I had none! I put everything on my hard drive with no backup incase of drive failure. Of course as my drive got full my computer slowed down so I had to find a way to get files off of my computer. So I started making CD's with files on them. I would take older folders of photo's and put them on CD's and that got them off of my computer but still didn't have a backup. Then I got my first external drive and I would put one copy of my photo's on computer and one on external drive my first real backup. But I didn't have a backup of what was on the CD's. So then I got another External drive and Copied all of my files from the CD's to the external drive and copied my external to the other external drive. Now for the first time I actually had a backup of all my files. But how to keep the backup? Thats the trick it actually takes me to physically make the backups. Which if your like me "Lazy" its hard to do. So then I tried to import to both drives but then I had raw files on one drive and processed files on the other. What to do? I want a system that will be simple. I want a backup that is safe away
from my active backup (the one that I'm using in Lightroom).
I'm on a podcast listening craze for the last couple of months and one of the podcast that I've listen to was Alpha Mirrorless with Juan Pons and Andy Williams. Both are wildlife and Landscape photographers that travel half of the year and I've pretty much copied what Andy Williams does for his backups. You can listen to their backup episode #17 which gets into detail. So I've just started a cloud based backup system through a company called BackBlaze which can automatically back up your computer and any external drives connected to them for 50 bucks a year. There are many more companies that do this but I used this one on the advice of Andy Williams and Juan Pons. What I like about it is I don't have to think, its simple I don't have to take the time to make the backup. If something should happen to my system you can retrieve from the cloud or they will ship you a external drive with all your files on them. They have been in the business for quite a while with a good safety reputation. The only downside of this is that it takes a while for the initial download of all your files. Im still in that process but after the initial it should be fairly quick. Then Ill have a copy at my house and one away from my house incase of a fire theft or computer crash or whatever. And I can access from any computer
anywhere to download a file.
Thats pretty much my system when I import to lightroom from my SD card or from my mobile external drive (I keep my photo's on external drive not computers hard drive) it goes to my drive and will be backed backed up by Backblaze on the cloud. I have tried to make my back up plan like my camera situation by making it simpler, smaller and more efficient. Again this is my system use any system you want but please use a system and keep on shooting!
Hey everyone! Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday and ate lots of Turkey! I know I did. This blog is about how I plan to manage my Lightroom catalog on my laptops for next year. File management is an ongoing process for me, and I change it every so often. This year I'll be adding a small travel laptop to the mix. Currently, I have my iMac with a 27-inch monitor that I love. I also have a 15-inch Macbook Pro that I have had for years and have upgraded the memory and hard drive on to an SSD, and I just love it! But it's a little on the heavy side, and I want a small laptop or 2-inch computer to take with me when I travel.
 _DSC4702
Whether it's camping in my Teardrop trailer or on photo workshops with my photography club, the last couple of years I have kept a separate Lightroom catalog on my laptop and my all photos catalog on my iMac separate and merged them at the end of the year. It's not too hard to do and seems to work out okay. But if I add another computer to the mix, what then? Do I work with three Lightroom catalogs? And when I have my photos on a laptop catalog, it can be difficult to look at them on my iMac if I haven't transferred them to it. So here is the solution that I plan to try this year. I'm going to purchase an SSD external hard drive for faster operating speed. I'm going to create a Lightroom catalog and put the catalog and everything on the SSD drive. Then, no matter what computer I'm using, I can bring up the catalog on the SSD drive and edit my photos on the iMac, MacBook Pro, or my travel computer.
 _DSC4701
I haven't purchased my travel computer yet, but I have a few requirements that I'm looking for. First, it should be small and portable with an 11 to 12 inch screen. It has to have the ports so I can back up photos to an external drive. I want it to have a Solid State Drive (SSD) for optimum speed and as much RAM that I can get at a low price (maybe 8gb). And it must be cheap, in the $300-ish range. That way if I break it, lose it, or if it's stolen, I'm not heart broken like I would be with my Macbook Pro. I don't plan on storing anything on it, so the hard drive doesn't need to be large. 128gb will be fine. I really don't plan on doing a lot of editing, but I want it to be capable of running Lightroom Classic so I can cull out bad photos and maybe edit one or two photos now and then. Other than that, it will be a web browsing, email checking computer.
Now with the price range I just gave, you can figure out that my travel laptop will not be an Apple product. I would love for it to be, but I want my travel computer to be cheap. So it will be a Windows operating system, and I will have to format my drive so it will work with Windows and Mac products so I can pass the information between the two operating systems. I currently use Adobe Creative Cloud for Photographers, which is a $10 per month subscription for both Lightroom and Photoshop. You can only run two computers on the subscription at a time, so I'll have to sign out of one of my devices and sign onto my travel laptop for this to work. From what I have read, this should be possible. Adobe even gives you instructions on how to do so.
 AMT2016-sony-a6300-review-0423-2Photographer: Anthony Thurston
Well everyone, I have finally made the switch. I am officially a full-time, mirrorless shooter! As you may know, I have been shooting DSLRs in some form or fashion for many years. I went from entry-level cameras to professional grade cameras and lenses. I used to shoot film cameras when I was younger, completely manual operation from exposure to focusing. So I have evolved from film shooting, black and white developing in the bathroom, to color slides, to point and shoot digital, to entry level DSLR's, professional DSLR's, and now to mirrorless cameras. There was a learning curve at each step, and I would like to think that my photography skills improved with each level. So you're probably wondering, why switch if I have been shooting professional-grade cameras? I have many reasons. But first, let me say that the professional cameras are great! I'm not putting them down in any way or fashion. I learned a lot using them and am thankful that I went through the process of getting them and using them. But why switch? Let me go through how I got hooked on mirrorless cameras.
About five or six years ago, my photography got me out of the house to start exploring different areas of our state. I started
 _MSP9570
hiking all of the trails I could find at State and National Parks and wanted to do more. My son and I decided that we wanted to start back packing. This entails hiking into the woods with everything you need to camp overnight: tent, sleeping bag, food, etc... Well, we soon found out that the packs were heavy, and then when you carry a full-frame camera and a couple of professional lenses, the weight really added up. A camera and a couple of f2.8 lenses could weigh up to 20 pounds. That's like three one-gallon jugs of milk that you carry around with you on top of all of your camping supplies. That made the pack very heavy, and it was already heavy enough with just the camping stuff. There were many pack configurations that were tried to relieve the weight of the camera and lenses, but nothing seemed to work. I was working on getting lighter camping equipment, but the weight of the camera was just too much. I had to come up with a solution that would still give me good quality photos, so I started looking into micro 4/3 cameras. I set up a checklist of things that I wanted out of a little camera. Some of them were that it had to be able to shoot in manual, it needed to be able to shoot in RAW, and it needed to be able to change lenses. I actually had it down to two cameras, an Olympus and a Sony. They both had great reviews, but I finally picked the Sony because of the sensor size. It had a larger ASP-C sized sensor, and the Olympus had a micro 4/3's, a smaller sensor. So weight was the first thing that brought me to the mirrorless cameras. But after a big learning curve, there were many other things that brought me to become a mirrorless camera user. Here are some of them:
 11-sony-a6300
1. Sensor Quality. Sony makes a lot of sensors for many camera companies besides Sony. There is Nikon, Iphone, and maybe more, but those are two big ones. The sensors are great, and the quality of the photographs I was taking were just as good as my professional camera as far as I could tell.
2. Customizable buttons. The Sony cameras are very customizable. The camera comes with custom buttons, and all of the buttons can be customized to you and your style of photography. For instance, I love back-button focus, so my camera is set up for it.
3. Size. Not only is it lightweight, but it is also small. A small footprint camera takes up less room in a pack or bag, and you can carry more with you and still be lighter than a full size DSLR. I think this makes you a more nimble/mobile photographer. I think that this makes you a better photographer, especially at the end of the day when the photographers have been lugging around a big camera and you are still rested enough to keep looking for good shots, not looking for somewhere to sit down.
 20171102_untitled shoot_0001
4. Price. Overall, the price of mirrorless cameras can be cheaper, especially in the ASP-C sensor sized camera. Now, like everything you can spend as much as you want for mirrorless. But like everything else, you don't have to. You can also adapt vintage lenses from the film days to your camera with a cheap adapter. I use some of my Pentax and Nikon lenses on this small body, and it brings me back to the days of film when everything was manual. And the size is about the same also.
5. What you see is what you get. WYSIWYG when you look through the view finder or the back of the camera. What you are looking at is what the sensor sees, so you know before you take the photo if it is correctly exposed or in focus. There really is no need to chimp, and it takes the guesswork out of exposure and lets you concentrate on composure, light, and subject. After the big learning curve, there is less fiddling with the camera.
 22730511_10210704932196387_7018311079726609722_n
All the things above and more make the mirrorless cameras more fun to use. Isn't that why we love photography so much? It's fun! That's the reason I am gearing down, not up! I have sold all of my big boy cameras and lenses and now only have one camera. I think this will make me think more about photography and less about gear. Now when I go somewhere I carry my camera, three lenses, and filters. The lenses are 10-18 f4, 18-105 f4, and a 70-200 f4 full frame equivalent to 105-300. This kit is very light, and I can carry it very easily in a shoulder bag that I call my purse. I used this system at our annual photography workshop a couple of weeks ago, and it was fantastic! While everyone was lugging around a large camera and one lens, I had my purse with three lenses at my disposal at the same weight or less. I know famous people like Jason Lanier and Gary Fong have made the switch, but they are sponsored by Sony. I am the only one that I know of that has made the switch from DSLR to mirrorless. I know I'm the only one in my photography club that has made the jump into full-time mirrorless. Some have dabbled in mirrorless, but none have gone full in. I believe I am the first of many that will eventually switch to mirrorless. For me and the photography that I do (landscape, travel, and occasional portraits), this camera works for me. I don't need the professional camera rig. This mirrorless fits me and the photography that I enjoy. So choose the gear that is right for you! Keep shooting!
|
Archive
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
|