Digital workflow

Having spent the weekend thinking about the forthcoming upgrade of my PC I have come to some conclusions about my digital work flow.    The first is that this is an opportunity to refine the process so that it is as efficient as possible.   The second, and this is a linked to the first, is that I will build the work flow around commercially available software rather than using software that I have written for myself.

The nuts and bolts of the work flow will be built on two file formats.   DNG and TIFF.   The reason for this is because these are open formats and so should be immune to the vagaries of changes within digital file format.  They also represent the highest quality files for saving data.   Of course I will use small JPG files when publishing to the net or when required but the main file formats I will use are DNG and TIFF.

As for the software I will build the work flow around Adobe products.   The reason for this is simple - they are the industrial standard for photography and so should provide a stable platform upon which to build any work flow.    The only exception to this will be the use of Photomatix for generating HDR images.

Why so many images?

Waterfall - Lathkildale

Having spent the day culling over 2000 images from the weekend shoot I am still trying to answer why I shot so many images.  For this shoot I think the answer can be broken down into the following reasons:

Subject Matter:  The main subject was wildlife, in particular migrating birds.   Because of this you have to shoot a large number of shots to get the image you are looking for.    If you are trying to capture an image of a goose landing then you need to shoot the whole landing and then perhaps choose one or two;

Experimentation:  I was also trying out new approaches and techniques.   This will always be a hit and miss affair and so will lead to a large number of discarded images.  This I guess is the cost of experimentation.

Of course the beauty and perhaps the curse of digital is that you can shoot as many images as you wish.   The real cost of digital is at the start - once you have bought the hardware then the costs are almost negligible.    This reminds me of the old joke about the cost of anew drug. The first tablet costs £700m whilst the second one only costs a penny.  So it is with digital.    Of course it is not that simple but certain types of images generate far more than others.   I would be very surprised if I generated this number of images if I were shooting a landscape - in fact I wouldn't.   Still I think I still need to monitor what I am shooting and why.

Geese at Dawn - Snettisham

Just to give you an idea of the number of geese that flew over at dawn.

The Mystery Wind Boarder

This should be the mystery wind boarder I mentioned earlier