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| Seedpod Heartfelt Opening |
What the heck do I do with all the images I have and how the heck do I go through them? Editing is crucial to creating a cohesive body of work. I include the amateur to the pro-no one is exempt. I load my images in Lightroom. For my personal and portrait work, this is the easiest route for me. I organize by date, which somehow my brain remembers when I was where photographing what. I suggest you ask yourself how to best organize for your brain. In Lightroom, you have an option to create catalogues or mini portfolios. I tend to create a new one or go right to an ongoing one, simply dragging and dropping the images. I premise this all by saying I have already set up a template for my metadata and keyword upon downloading. This makes my editing time significantly faster. I evaluate my images first by quickly going through the images-ranking as I go. Once at the end of the roll, I filter to only see those images I ranked. Again, I go through evaluating each technical aspect of an image from composition to visual meaning to useage. Once I get down to the keepers, I process through Lightroom's Develop module. I set the correct White Balance (WB) using the dropper. Although I do have a series of steps, I experiment with all the options provided in the development tool until I feel I have reached a printing point. Often I will go into Photoshop (CS3 for BW and CS5 for color) to create layers using a combo of curve adjustments, gradient tool, and the history brush. My goal is to create visual depth with light and shadow and reveal or dim texture. I am for the preservation of my pixels and have non-destructive development techniques. This is very significant for me as I am a photographer, not a digital artist. Once I cross over into destructive techniques, I create a (beautiful or not) piece of digital art. I have some friends who are amazing digital artists. For me, I find my place is in photography-both within the capturing of a scene and through the process of printing.
Just a side note: I use CS3 for printing all my black and white images because I use a Quad tone Profile that has had some issues with compatibility in CS5. Otherwise, I use Lightroom to print my color work even if I do make adjustments in Photoshop. Believe it or not that is my work flow process. Some images take hours while others perhaps just one hour of processing. I will also add that as I begin to put a cohesive body of work together I print on a variety of papers to find the 'right' one. I do use luster or enhanced matte paper for proofing.
Next article: Preparing to make a photographic print....some old school rules applied to the digital work flow
