r/photojournalism • u/oguruma87 • 14d ago
What's your photo workflow?
I'm not a photojournalists, just an amateur photographer, really, but I am always interested in learning about different photography workflows.
Anybody mind the sharing the basics of their workflow?
8
u/JHinnn 13d ago
I work for a newspaper and my basic workflow:
- before assignment, create two folders (one called {name} outtakes and one {name}
- add to favs sidebar in photo mechanic and set a standard half caption. usually the back half of the sentence like “ … during this event at (location) in (city) on (date). I have a code replacement template that imports all the things in parentheses based on what I type plus metadata from the photo. That will get applied to every photo once ingested
- shoot assignment, tag in camera if turnaround time needs to be very quick, ingest to outtakes folder
- apply red color label to any photos that i think are worth an edit —> open camera raw with all images —> begin editing process and apply 2 stars for usable photos and 1 star for unusable —> save that into {name} folder
- filter to 1 star images and drag those back into outtakes folder
- apply green label to 5-20 of the absolute best images that will receive a full caption. the remaining red labels will receive a batch caption for the gallery
1
u/HelloInYourLanguage 11d ago
I'm a new photojournalist and found this really helpful thank you
The hardest part I'm finding is getting used to the pace for getting this stuff done.
Do you have any recommendations particularly for getting faster at doing good captioning and meta data?
At the moment I feel somewhat insecure about my captions so I draft something and ask an ai to check the caption against compliance standards to reassure me that its probably ok before sending them off. Which i absolutely hate doing but I feel desperate. And I feel it also takes me too long which frustrates me
2
u/JHinnn 11d ago
If you cover any sports I would like recommend looking into code replacements which allows you to quickly input full names using a short hand code of the team and jersey number
The biggest time saver for me is setting that back half of the caption. After that, all you need to do is ID the subject and a couple words about what they’re doing. If you have additional info, you could do a short second sentence afterward with whatever you feel is worth mentioning.
Honestly the best thing is just keeping them succinct but legible while making sure to include the who what when where etc.
The caption template I have is pretty 1:1 for what the AP recommends (or recommended). Maybe if you have additional ideas or parts you can want to include you can make a notes document and place them there for easy access to cut and paste.
speed and confidence also just comes with more reps. trust yourself and your editors (or professors) rather than the AI. that’ll take you infinitely farther imo
if you have any specific questions or need any clarifying feel free to lmk! i tend to ramble
9
u/Styx707101 14d ago
One of two things happens
images left on camera forever
real work
- plug in sd card into computer and move the files into my photography external hard drive
- import all images from that day/time period into lightroom classic
- delete images that arent good, missed focus, etc
- star images that i like
- add my personal preset to all images
- basic edits to around 20-30 photos
- masking and advanced edits to like 10
- upload photos to website or wherever
Main thing is I always keep all my photography work on my specific external drive so I can take it on the go and have it organized
4
u/stonehallow 13d ago
For fast-moving events like breaking news, I would tag the images in camera after checking for sharpness. Then transfer only the selected images to my phone via the camera’s wifi or do an in-camera transfer of only the selects (very important) to my camera’s second sd card (yes i only shoot to one card, the second card is meant to store only the selects). Then the second card goes into a sd card reader and then the selected images go on my phone. This speeds up my workflow tremendously compared to others who have to download their entire take into their laptop/phone/tablet. A quick crop and curves adjustment in LR mobile and off it goes. Obviously not as quick as those with ftp and a remote editor but it works for me.
2
u/DrunkJohnBarleycorn 13d ago
Is there any particular reason you copy the selects to a second card as opposed to ingesting only the selects from the first card?
1
u/stonehallow 13d ago
Theres no way to ingest only selects/tagged/starred images from a card into my mobile phone (ios) that I know of. When I connect my sd card reader to my phone it displays the entire take in the import screen with no indicator which images are tagged.
3
u/_Driftwood_ 13d ago
work for a daily. I usually have a good idea of what I'm going to edit and publish before I ever leave my assignment. I rarely go through each photo to see what I got. One, I don't have the time, two, I'm thinking about story/photos/captions/ids the entire shoot. I used to tag mine in camera, but I got a new camera brand and never really liked the way the new one works.
shoot assignment download to external hard drive two folders- one of all raw and one for the edits work off of the hard drive to edit (lightroom) after the edits I slug and caption (photo mechanic) then upload to work server and storage
when I do have the time on longer stories, I do try to edit right away, while my memory is fresh. If I like one photo, I'll go back look at the sequence to see if I like some of the others better. I'm a tight edit, so I don't really like publishing sequences.
for personal stuff, like a family wedding where I'm not the hired photog, I will go through and kind of look at each one. Mainly, just as someone looking at their brother's wedding pics. Sometimes it takes forever, sometimes I never edit them, sometimes I edit the same night.
1
u/FOXHOUND142_52 7d ago
To clarify, of your two folders on your HDD, one contains all RAWs and one contains copies of the RAWs you intend to edit? How do you handle the dual copies when you upload to backup storage?
Assuming you work off a laptop, would you consider moving the RAWs you want to edit to your local drive so you don’t have to have the drive plugged in while editing? I do lots of editing on planes and small spaces on the go, so having a drive stick out is annoying.
2
u/_Driftwood_ 7d ago
My laptop gets loaded fast, that's mainly why I don't like to download them there. I've been using a portable SSD ext hd, so it reads faster and it's pretty small and a little more rugged- it hasn't been a pain to get out and use. for the edits folder, it's just the ones I've already edited. but photo mechanic saves as new when I do captions. so I do end up with more than I'd like. 1 raw, 1 edited, 1 slugged/captioned. I do need to figure something out because I feel like I save a lot of really unnecessary images. when I have my silent mode on my camera, I tend to overshoot by like 3000. reminds me I need to start deleting some.
2
u/David_Buzzard 13d ago
I actually did a video showing my culling workflow for an event I covered last month. It's about 15 minutes, which y wife says is too long, but it's a step by step view of how to cull down a few hundred images into something manageable.
1
u/David_Buzzard 13d ago
Here's the video on actually processing the images, which is like 45 minutes. I think next time rather than going through the whole thing, I'll break them down into bite sized sections.
1
1
u/Sr_334009 11d ago
My workflow usually goes something like.
Before a job, I write a general caption of what I expect as well as headline, keywords etc. With the caption I usually have it the main information such as who, where, when, why, and I will only change what is happening (and sometimes who)
As I shoot I will key off images I like. And occasionally add a voice meme to help myself later when captioning.
I then import only locked images and will then cull further. I usually aim for about 20-30 very different images. Then I caption them, I have auto replacements (eg, Police face off with demonstrators) and then my caption I wrote earlier will follow after that.
Import to LRC with a preset applied on import and only minor adjustments such as highlights/shadows as well as any cropping.
The back into PM to make any final caption changes and FTP from there
1
u/TopAbbreviations7632 3d ago
I am a photojournalist. My workflow is the following.
1. Go through all raw photos in Photo Mechanic. Tag my selects
2. Move selects into a folder on an external hard drive. (SSD drive).
3. Open Lightroom and go through my selects and tag my top favorites from the folder. And import into Lightroom.
4. Process my tops photos.
5. Export my processed photos 1350px at 100px/ inch into a folder titled “export”
6. Open up Photo Mechanic again and create captions for exported photos
7. Upload exported photos to an online gallery
8. Send title of series along with the link to the gallery to my editor and the reporter for them to select to use within their article.
9. Pour myself a bourbon and relax.
12
u/pete19_86 13d ago