Developing Your Good Photography Habits
Thursday, July 17, 2008 @ 05:18
Why is having a consistent workflow so important? Because it's the only thing that will pay the bills and keep food on the table if you are trying to run a viable business.
While amateur photographers with no intention or desire of ever going professional can afford to "free form" their photography hobby, anyone planning to make a living from this has to be a bit more organized. We need to develop a series of routines for capturing, copying and processing our photos. We need to not just develop these routines, but we have to perfect them to a stage where they run like clockwork ... very organized ... so that we have a consistent workflow that speeds up the entire process of creating and framing a shot to selling it to a customer.
In order to streamline workflow, we need to become familiar with photo editing software, such as Photoshop. Shoot your images in RAW format. This will allow you to easily make adjustments in Photoshop, especially with color temperature and exposure. Because RAW images are lossless and contain all the information available in the photograph, RAW offers the greatest deal of flexibility. Then, if JPEGs are needed later on down the line (perhaps because a particular client requested the images in that format) it is much easier to convert them from RAW format. Photoshop even offers a batch processing feature that will make this sort of thing easy, especially when it is necessary to work with a large number of photos.
Another way to streamline your workflow is to get into the very good habit of copying ALL of your images up to your computer immediately. Don't wait for a better time. If something goes wrong, or if your camera and/or memory card is stolen, you could lose those images forever. Take the added step of copying them to a computer file, with secondary copies made to auxiliary storage as soon as possible, before you turn in that night. The day may come that you will thank your lucky stars that you did.
The most important thing to remember is that it is wise to establish a workflow and stick with it! This is an essential part of being a digital photography professional because it will ensure that your images are handled in the exact same manner every time. Of course, the steps that may be right for me may not work well for you. The important thing is that you experiment and find the system that serves you best, and then make a personal commitment to stick with it.
