The first reflections on my day at Bempton

Well it has been 24 hours and I have just culled a 1000 images from the 1275 I took yesterday at Bempton.  This sounds like a disaster.  What went wrong?   This was indeed my feelings last night as I had a quick run through the images whilst they were being uploaded to Lightroom.  So many duds - what went wrong?   Luckily I was so tired last night after being up for nearly 24 hours I didn't have time to reflect on this problem as I fell asleep.  A new day and a fresh perspective and suddenly things are not as bad as they first seemed.  Indeed I am now feeling very satisfied with my days work.  So why the change?

I think the answer lies in the conditions you work in at Bempton.  On a bright day you tend to get incredible changes in light, from bright reflected sunshine over the sea to dark shadows near to the cliff face.  You are also trying to capture fast moving birds at really close range.  These birds also tend to be predominantly white which does play havoc with any metering you might do.  The cumulative effect of these problems is that an awful lot of images are, well there is no other word for it, crap.

However, when you start to work with the images you find that amongst the dross there are some real gems.  In fact given the challenging conditions, the only way to really guarantee any chance of capturing something good is to blast away.  It is not pretty, and if I was shooting film hugely expensive, but is works.  

An example of this is the photograph of the Fulmar above.   Now I have a love hate relationship with this bird.  When you are shooting at a cliff face you can almost be sure that there will be a Fulmar darting around, usually just above your head, you can almost imagine they are taunting you to try and capture a photograph.   Despite this they are a wonderfully graceful bird, almost making no effort to fly past you at great speed, using the updrafts from the cliffs to propel them along.  So to capture an image of this bird I have to take an awful lot of photographs.   It could be argued that I need to rethink my approach but there really is nothing more to do than blast away at every opportunity.  When it works it is great, but it doesn't work very often and can be very frustrating.  In short, as with most other wildlife photography, you have to put the hours in to get the shot you want, this is so true at Bempton as well.

So I will plough through the remaining images to see which can be turned into worthwhile photographs.  Looks like it will be an interesting few days.

Back up Complete

I have completed the new back up for my images.   It took a lot less time than I imagined and now appears to work very well.   It is, perhaps, not as sophisticated as commercial software but I am confident in what it is doing.   Also, it fits neatly into my workflow and so whenever I have finished creating finished TIFF files I will be able to back up my work immediately.  No commercial software would do that.

I have to say I am more and more impressed with the performance of the new computer.   I have just created a panorama out of four full sized RAW files from Lightroom into Photoshop.   This process used to take several minutes before.  Now, just over a minute from start to finish.  It was a marvel watching the blending and alignment take place before your eyes.

Perhaps it was worth the frustration when it arrived.

A Bright and cold Boxing Day

Burrough on the Hill

I spent a cold morning at Burrough on the Hill iron age hill fort on boxing day.  I was trying out my new resolution to reduce the number of images I take at each shoot.  How did I do?   Well I am not sure as I still ended up with nearly 100 images from a 1 1/2 hour shoot.   Whether this was good or bad I am not sure.  However, I am still working on my own rule of thumb - I try and produce 6 good images from each shoot.   This is really what I am working towards.   The only problem I have with shooting so many is handling them.   This has meant that I have become pretty ruthless in my editing and out of the hundred I may take I only keep a couple of dozen or so.

In an attempt to try and reduce the verbiage from my shoot I decided to shoot using my trust old tripod.   This was useful as it did slow me down and think a little bit more about what I was shooting.   The problem I did face was that I lost some of the spontaneity of the shoot.   The little was so good that I didn't really need the tripod but it was a good exercise.   I gave my Lee Filters a good work out as well.  I have to say I do love the neutral density graduated set.   It was just nice to get out in the filed and take a few images.

This has made me even more frustrated with Dell.   I have not been able to process the images and possible print on or two up as my new dell is still awaiting the attentions of the engineer, and no doubt a new hard drive.   Still, Monday is only a day or so away and I must be patient.

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.