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Workflow Part 2

We talked about the software terms of renaming to get to my naming convention in terms of searching up and down for images successfully, it has to render and save the images preview so I can review them without rebuilding the previews and without needing to be linked to the actual files. And what that means is the program that I use it makes a catalogue, it makes large actual image thumbnails and aiken scroll up and down and look at those, even if I'm not linked to the original files. The newer versions of light room, I'm told, don't do this, but the older versions of light remember when you click on an image, it will say rendering and it takes a quarter second quarter second times two hundred images and I want to go to sleep the software that I use it'll take that quarter second, it'll make a big four by six image and it keeps that quicktime file within the catalogue, and so every time I go back I can see it again and again, and I can edit keyword and capture and do all this stuff wit...

hout being linked to the original files, so you must be able to school quickly through those previews to both surveys, shoot and to give me the option of looking at the siri's of images is a time lapse animation it must be able to make and store a separate catalog for each time lapse animation I actually am not this is the ford chevy nikon cannon debate some people make one giant light room catalog. Some people make many little catalogs I am of the little catalog school, so for example, I'm going to make separate catalogues for each one of those animation sets there. I have thousands of these little catalogues all over my desktop because my system is to take a catalogue from one project put it within the project I don't actually have one gigantic monstrous one because the other problem when you reach a certain number in any of those who machine starts slowing down so much so here's an example of how I used this software program this is a two different sets of images in an animation. The blue one at the top is one animation and then the yellow is a different animation and I tagged them with the color codes and then I'll sort them and separate them into two separate folders and a lot of times in between I'll go through it all actually dumped the frames where the exposure fluctuated during a time lapse animation or where the camera moved or something that I don't want to have there and then I'm going to copy the animation sequences from that one larger catalogue with all of them to a souse of uniquely named caption uniquely named animation sequences these air all, uh, september two thousand twelve in bangle or india and souse of animations that I shot. And then I'll make a separate catalog for each animation. So here, you see, I've got the folders with all the images and then below them is one of these catalogs. And I just continue to make new ones of these that's my sister don't go out and do it. But I understand why, but I could find anything in about ten seconds. You give me a name, I can find it by name as fast as my computer will search for if you give me an image, I just have to remember a couple things that I can at least find where to look. Um, and again, I'm renaming them to my naming convention than in my case. I had a number. So I know which animation set that the rain is well and I renamed to do except to add a number, and I put them in separate folders by the different animation sets. And so this is what I was talking about before. So I've made this catalog anyway. So the idea is that I have made a movie showing you I khun scroll through a series of images. To see what a time lapse animation is gonna look like try that light room sometimes it doesn't work because it's going to say, rendering, rendering it's gonna pause. And so that's what I love about this software here's another one and not controlling these are movies that I made up just for this purpose. Go on, do it again, I think okay, so again stroking back to questions to ask if your software can do this again. There's no right or wrong, but for me, I need to be able to go through really, really quickly and mark the ends and the outs, and I do this in answer to a question before I do it on the j pegs because those processes quicker, they make those thumbnails that I'm going to keep in that catalogue quicker and aiken scroll through them quicker and so I'm going to go through the market in and out. I'm going to do that very fast. I must be able to quickly check the focus as well on an image and continue to color code the images as in or out when I'm zooming in to check the focus, it must be ableto re link the catalogue to thee. Original files no matter where they are and then apply whatever editing I did to those files one of my biggest gripes with light room is that if you lose the link online room, you can spend a lot of time to make sure it's connected correctly and the information that you've created in the catalogue to actually get back on the program I use is actually really, really simple and I intentionally disconnect cause I'm going on the road and when I get home intention reconnecting all the information transfer please you're using j peg for all of this right here but your raws and everything or save back on another hard driving everything where if you have to you can go back to those well, we're actually going to go through a little bit of one of those editing steps that I talked about what we talked about the editing steps so at the moment I'm going to add it with the j pegs because there quicker to edit and then actually what I'm gonna do is I'm going to transfer that edit selection to the raws so whatever I decided to dump will get dumped in both the raws and the j pegs okay, you're about two steps ahead of me it really no no it's great you're you're thinking okay that's good, but now what about that's what you're supposed to do so this is what my desktop looks like when I'm editing and so here's it's one of the foreclosure shoots and I use the one two and three buttons on the up and down arrows and when I'm editing it's literally just like this down down one, two one, two, three one one one two three one is green three two one is green too is red and three is blue and it's really a simple is that just in out in out and I got to go through pass once I'll probably go through one more time in check but I end up with just this red, green, blue, green, red, green and this case blue I'm using on this kind of editing as may be okay, I edit two or sometimes even free passes with red being out in green being in and what I'm doing this kind of editing the blue is let's look at it again and then if in doubt about the sharpness I'm goingto again j pegs only simply because they render faster and I could zoom in faster um and I'll mark those red if they're not in focus so for example here's a picture from nepal couple of pair of sandals nice lighting looked to me like the left one was out of focus so I zoom in zoom in further and sure enough, I got a little bit of camera shake so I'm market is red and that's the most I do most of the time I can do it just down red, red, green, green, red, green blue if I'm not sure and then I'll make another pass that way the whole the whole point of this being is I added very fast I shoot loose I had fast so that when I go back here we are with the red and the green and then I back off so mohr and here's the answer to your question if you look up there right now I've got both j pegs and the raws and so then I give thee software they used a command where it says transfer the information copied the annotations from the j pegs with rod raw files I do that he goes through this little thing and you'll notice now the j pegs and the raw files are both read the one I want to get rid of and then I dumped them but I do my initial edit on the j peg simply because they're faster because I don't want to slow down the process and again I'm not sure you need to internalize all of this but the ideas why don't you use the j pegs there faster to edit? I am going to be tracking both of j pegs in the raws but first I had it only on the j picks because they're faster all right? Um and then when I'm doing videos, red is out and blue is to be made into audio because a lot of times that the audio guys here creative lives probably horrified to hear this a lot of times when I want to get an audio clip, I'll just record a video clip with the camera pointing down the microphone pointing at something else and I get the audio that I need and then I'll go back and actually will strip out the video and if I used a decent microphone, I usually have pretty good audio going right in there and it's just a thing of one more thing to carry so a lot of times I get my best audio by shooting videos and stripping out the video pardon just keeping the audio um they were going in further. This is what it looks like after I've done my rib eye edits of the reds are out the greens, the unmarked ones we're going to be in all those reds are about to get vaporised the blues o r I'm going to move into that wave category only when I'm shooting video I should just is loose again. The thing about video is that I'm doing a mix of video for my projects or jobs and stock video, which is people are increasingly buying short video clips for use on the web stock videos exact same format ten seconds put the camera in one place let one activity happen shallow depth of field not too complicated run for ten seconds move on to the next thing so I tend to shoot a lot of those I shoot again very loose all I have to do is go through here and edit them pick out the ones that are in the ones that are out and dump the ones I don't want to keep I have a whole bunch of would've called presets light room has pre says photo shops has pre sets for action and over the years I've made up a whole bunch of pre sets that they used for the various editing that I just described and so that's the other thing learning how to use preset with any software will speed up your process so again going back to the question what do you need a software to do? What I ain't software to dio the software must be able to sort files by every imaginable determinant such as captured day except for matt sighs etcetera I don't find light room gives me enough sorting capabilities it does the obvious one of the format the size, but if I want to ask you to sort by lens or by focal length or by camera body this program does it I haven't figured out in light we may do it, but I haven't figured out a way to do it must be able to clearly show me the metadata that's embedded in each image or missing is in case of each image and actually light room does that okay? And I'm not trying to pick on lightning, but that seems to be the default software for other people um again circling back to software capabilities must be allowed me to make bulk corrections of the image history ram and the image white balance such that each correction is specific to each image and what I'm getting in it sounds like it's more complicated than is the difference I found between photo shop and I'm only on photoshopped three so I might be a little behind is that if you take a bunch of images in light room in photo shop and you say auto, correct them but actually use auto correct a lot it auto corrects them all exactly the same if you go into the light room and you say auto correct these thirty images it makes thirty different corrections it's smart enough to do that and that for me is a huge difference and you're thinking to yourself probably why does he use light room and why does he is auto? Because in stock photography and publication photography, they don't actually want some of the dramatic lighting that you've seen they actually want relatively simple hissed a grams they don't want any solid black they don't any solid white and the auto is actually a really good starting point for atleast getting near there and so light room does that really, really well thirty images thirty different white balance is thirty different exposure corrections and it could make thirty different unique ones unlike photoshopped so that's probably my favorite thing about light and that's pretty much all that I use light room for most of the editing, organizing captioning all the other stuff I actually doing the other software which give you the link two in just a little bit but I use light room for the final output I almost never used photo shop unless I have to fix something more questions on the software capability to keep in mind um must allow me to copy the same information to images with the same name but different format must be able to easily copy keywords and captions and all that other stuff from one image to multiple images and what that means is I keyword one image like this and I'll use one of these presets and I'll say okay copy all the key words from the first image which has the key words all those other ones and again there are many softwares that do this I just find this one to be the fastest because you select the first one copy from the head of the selection copies the keywords, the caption or whatever you want all of them um I organized I'm going on and I'm going on organized videos into folders and edit them down and I've had these have all been renamed to my naming convention another software capabilities question must be able to quickly and easily change the images, movies and sound files to other formats if I want to get the raw files and tournament of laura's j pegs if I want to take the m o v files and turn them into a jpeg of the first frame so people can see that if I want to go from the audio from the video file to the way file I need to be able to do that and I haven't found light room very good for doing all that stuff that fast so again I prefer my software must be able to make proof sheets or pds like we've been talking before quickly and easily to send and users and one of the questions was about reducing the file size of the pdf there's a bunch of different ways of going into that one I showed you the color sync utility in your max will enable you it has a preset to reduce the file size of a pdf but the other way you could do it and with the programme I use it I actually give it a size I could say you low res images or whatever to reduce the file size the pdf um must be it was okay must easily interconnect with other programs that he used to process manage digital image files. And by that what I mean is that I could do all the captioning keyword ing and then I've got it selected for the final one that's going to the end user and I hit one button and it opens that image in light room so I can do that one final bit of final work in light room. And so I really love the software software you used is called mediapro one used to be called expressions media before that it was called I've you you might have heard those names along the way I view was originally a british company on dh. Then it was actually bought by microsoft, and microsoft recently sold it to this company. Phase one um I was using it for a long time, and then a few years ago somebody connected me with them and they wrote an article about me. If you want to understand in much more detail y I'm actually so sold on this software you might look it downloading that pdf it's free off of their sight and so the software against called mediapro I will probably interchangeably call it mediapro I've your expressions media, but it all basically it's the same thing andrei talk yesterday about outsourcing and trying to think of how can you use your time most efficiently and what should you not spend a lot of time on learning to do if it doesn't add value to your workflow I don't print I don't print it all I don't know anything about printing everybody's like smirking because photographer doesn't not a print right I do very very little printing of my own I have ah yes I guess it is technically we have a very low and ebsen in our house which is basic printer having said that I have lots of exhibitions I sell foreign our prince I do all the stuff I've outsource my printing almost completely okay my monitors calibrated I know howto profile paper I know how to get good raw exposures I know how to do all this stuff but I just can't see the benefit of sustaining one of those giant epson inks printers with those cartridges that you have to keep being happy and if they get humid your mind so I work in the lab called adirama in new york and if and I don't get any commission for this I just think that they solve my problem right well my problem I need to print from everywhere last night actually I find it I told you about the idea the watson show last night I got an email about the exact dates and the size so last night I literally went online did all this work and ship them show from new york so because I have the files already done um my mother is calibrated I know how to profile the paper perfectly. I know how their systems work. I've done a whole bunch of tests print where I san damages to them, they send them back to me, I compare them so I have these presets so I know how to work with her system, the prince heir very, very reasonable. They're very, very good. And so for my particular workflow this's away of outsourcing and I've been saying you should or shouldn't do it, but when you go go out there in the real world, do you wantto spend the money on buying a printer? I wouldn't so anyway about sort of printing completely. All right, so now we're going to keep going on this is a window with that program. This is like the older version this is expression media rather than I view, but it's still fundamentally the same thing. One of things I need to be able to do is I need to be able to make either pds to send out for, um, that instant editing I was talking before or I need to be able to make these little proof sheets to register my work with library congress. How did you register your work with library congress? How many people online registered or work with library congress could we get account there? Jim, I'm being sarcastic, but how many do I hope we're going to take from here forward about how to register you want to learn how to register your work with library of congress every single image I made since two thousand one including some old film images are registered with the library congress I'm gonna walk you through very briefly registering with elaborate congress and the logic is really simple if somebody misuse is your work and you haven't registered, you have this enormous hammer to sue them and to say yes, you didn't have the rights to that you really owe me this much money and then you only lawyers, fees and punitive damages and all this other stuff that really makes it frankly worthwhile. There are photographers out there these days who make more money suing than they do shooting because they've been diligent over the years about registering their work with library congress and tracking down and users and so I'm gonna walk you briefly sir registering the trigger that I was alluding to is in two thousand one the law changed that used to be you could only register one image of the time and nobody did that in two thousand one they went to it's called bulk registration you can register is many images as you want in theory up to one year I don't wait one year because I don't want to gather up that much work and not do anything with the work for one year. I register about once a month, so I save everything up that stock register a month's worth of work next month, our register next month or register, so I'm gonna walk you briefly through the process. I could probably do two days on copyright registration, there's a lot of stuff on the web about copyright registration. This is the form that you're trying to get when you're all done. This is a slightly older version, but this's, thie it's a legal document, it says that you own the work, the government and tested that, and this is the starting point in case something goes wrong with the lawsuit. Um, I'm old school, I generally still send them physical prince, because what's going to happen if there's a lawsuit, in my case a perfect example. If there's a lawsuit, the lawyers on the other side are going to go in the line of libra congress database and see that I've got about one hundred thirty registrations and my guess is it's going to stop there because they're going to say, you know, we got a problem here because he's got a hundred thirty registrations, he might know what he's doing, um and then if not the next step would be to verify that the registration valid they go through a whole bunch of things and one of the things they want to look at I would've called the deposit copies and so you have to actually send images to library congress you khun send them as I do as four by six proof sheets with twelve images on the sheet and you don't have to put the image of information the top I just like that cause I'm paranoid you don't want more than twelve images on a sheet apparently because they have to be able to read the images that's what I've learned from library congress you can also send them if you want as a cd or dvd you could send them as a pdf you can upload them as images as single images or pdf you khun send them actually is a video with each image on the screen for five seconds could you imagine doing that where you can send them full size images again uploading them? The whole point is to me is what happens fifty years from now my daughters going after somebody along since dead which of those is the most likely to be found? We'll the dvd is not going to open right pdf on they could be able to find it the video so I go with prince but that's just me and then the other thing you need to do is you have to label your images with some kind of information referring to the exact set and again, this is not a class on copyright, but it just gives you an idea of this is how I identify my sets, my name that the bunch that I registered and then these are all the sub names using my naming protocol naming convention and then the number of images and that's what's going to go into the library of congress. So I'm briefly going to take you through the electronic copyright registration office and don't fall asleep here is actually much it's very, very bad windows looking interface, but they actually have simplified it quite a lot, and I I'm here pretty much every month like clockwork. So this is how you do it. I tell you to get started, you have to log in here, it's like any other side and, you know, it's called ico e copyright. I'm starting a new registration. There are three components to registration, not surprisingly, an application, a payment and the actual work. Um, and then you go through, you select what type of registration this case, it's, uh, visual arts and yes, I am the author, and on the right is the button that makes my life easier. All those question who's the author who's the person who claims it who's the person who you contact for rights and permission who's the person you correspond with who's the person who actually gets the certificate it's all over their words has add me it's actually much less trouble than most people think they think oh my god library congress the u s government how the bureaucracy so I just keep hitting add me I'm going to go to the next one and fill out the ad the information the first time around and then add me I'm just going to keep going back and adding me at me at me at me and it feels it out actually much faster than you would think who's in charge of rights and permissions at me that's going to come my new name is abby who is in charge of the first to correspond with at me who do you mail this certificate to who pays for so then you go to the payment method I usually pay with a credit card and then I authorise them and then I have to either upload electronically or send them the actual copies like I talked about before if I'm going to do it by mail they actually give me a uh shipping slipped that's what I'm looking for they actually give me that as a pdf I printed out I put in a package and I sent it off I finished the registration. Congratulations, it's really not that hard. You really want to start thinking about building this into your work flow? Not tomorrow, but at some point time. And I know this by looking at all your faces, your projects and we talked about this. They're gonna start there is going to get to a point where this work is going to become a value you want to control that you want to have this hammer they just raised it. Unfortunately used to be thirty five it's now fifty five dollars it's fifty five dollars for a cz many images as you can register in a year the protection last your lifetime plus seventy years that's a current law I typically register about five hundred images a month between jobs and stock, five hundred images a month, seventy year plus my lifetime. So give me another thirty years. It makes the math easier one hundred years from today. So stuff I just read destroyed about three weeks ago. It's one hundred years, five hundred images potentially, but not always one hundred fifty thousand dollar payoff one fifty five dollars fee it's just it's just business it's straight business and so you wantto go online and look up copyright registration for photography because it's different for tax is different for music and all these other things were different but you want to start understanding and now and at some point time you want to start building into your workflow because when what your problem is and I'm not being at all flipping by the way is that one of these days you photograph somebody who goes on or maybe already is quite famous and other people start pirating this stuff um oh god what is that jonbenet ramsey is that the little girl was in colorado I believe a little fashion yeah apparently it was a studio photographer did that portrait and he or she need I've never heard the gender actually here she actually had registered all of his or her so his or her job these days it's to send letters to people say I'm sorry that's my photo I have this hammer you have to pay and apparently it's pretty much a done deal so especially in your case because this project is to build this style to start photographing people you don't know who you're going to be photographed and if you had this hammer built into your system so what you're trying to get in this is your question before cindy I know it's really and believe the harder it but this is a registration for they just got back from library of congress and it list every single image name okay? It is really not nearly as hard as it looks they've actually made it fairly simple but this is all the stuff somebody does something stupid with this work in the next my lifetime plus seventy years my imaginary grandchildren and get very wealthy because I'll be long since gone so that's library congress registration for now just put it in the right and so now we're going forward with the rest of my workflow please how about a question from the internet? Awesome so liz mama says a question about the registration for copyrights do you register first before giving the image after clients or posting online I try to register everything is unpublished cause it's simpler sometimes I have to register after the fact if you register beforehand the registration process is one step simpler and you have to send them less stuff it hasbeen published you have to send them twice as much depart jefferson twice but you have to send to deposit copies instead of one so that's a pain um and then the other thing which I'll do this one of the few times where I will register with an electronic submission is a job I'll do a job elektronik lee registered that night and then the stuff goes to the client next day and because I have a proof of when it was registered technically it was registered as unpublished once it's been registered as unpublished you don't actually have to go revisited and registered again if and when it's published it starts from that registration your lifetime plus seventy years and I'm not sure if you know, but alejandro would like to know can you register with the library of congress? Ifyou're not us, absolutely that's not what I do know and the answer is absolutely yes and there are people who do that because the copyright laws in this country are strong with hammer that's given by registration tends to be strong in this country than certain other countries. Yes, absolutely right. So I'm going to continue now with my work flow, which I know part of his life, huh? But I think he got a few things out of that. So now what we've done at this point is that I'm going through a grudge grabbing all the images this wasn't photoshopped now doing light room I do that simple auto correction I was talking about before I have this tracking sheet which came out of the bad old days of slides where I track where everything goes at the top of this list the agents or what I call image exclusive, they get the images and nobody else can get them below that middle line. The images are not images exclusive and this is this is my day job tracking stock photography but he's got a day job this is actually my day job so question is how did the images I get from the agent too for me too the agent sometimes all ftp them sometimes I'll see them sometimes I posted on a web page is going over to ftp and this idea of using a cd thank god is ebbing this is my hand written tracking sheet which looks like a bit of a mass I know just recently finally came to the twenty first century and make a right. I just recently learned how to use number, which is the mack version of xl but now I've got this whole thing and this has got all the information at the top is that library congress registration number, the collection number, the agency's it's gone to how many went how many came back and so I'm uploading them in some form or another to something place where the agency can see it they'll send me an email back and say, well, it's nice you sent us all those pictures, but we only want those five I go back to tracking sometimes I tracked but by hand written increasingly I'm getting it slowly moved over to the numbers pages this's my older, slightly messy digital desktop, I make a proof sheet which has the agents and the images there's a close up of it and the crew she has an unoriginal name something like this is o nine o five srilankan non documentary at an agency called the aurora september two thousand five in sri lanka non documentary means there's no faces, and it was at the agency called aurora staple a proof sheet together. Go through and pick out the red means dump. Surprise green means keep and this is that point where they looked at them and they said they want this one all these other similares disappear. I do still have him to go back to your question on the dvds, which are archived, but at this point in my system on ly the green one that's gone to the photo agency, which is the one that they're going to use that's, the one that stays in my in my hard drive in my active system, the dvds air just a backup. So then picking up red trash green to keep and then I go through like he word them actually, to be honest, I don't keep them anymore. I actually send them off to die in india in about a week later, he sends me back them he worded another thing about outsourcing and more key wording. And then I go through and I do actually work on these images wanted a time again my starting point is that auto button stock photos they don't want screaming blacks of screaming whites they actually want tohave whites that are not too bright and dark that are not too black and so my starting point is usually the auto button and then I'm a tweak it a little bit I use a ton of what's called actions in photo sets or presets in light room because I do the same thing over and over and over again so I don't actually sit there and open them all I make the corrections and light room I hit some kind of pre set our action I go do something else and I come back and they're in the finished folder um so this is what it's going to end up like in the faraway column this is for example september two thousand five sri lanka and shows you all the different places the images ended up and I'm not saying you should do it that way but I know where everything is any of those agencies come back to me to ask for something somebody wants an image by name if I have to find it by identifying it it's there and that's my particular storage system I mostly keep the raw files sometimes the d n gs and would've called the ex mps with sidecars which one? Using light room or photoshopped it makes changes to the raw file but it doesn't actually change that file that says next time you open it make it lighter darker and so I mostly store the raw files in the extent piece because if I stored all the j pegs and all the tips that in my whole so that's workflow I know it's kind of a little but I know where everything is I know how to find it I know who I shot it for I know who has it now you're gonna want to start doing that okay with all of your projects though they're different on one level with all your projects are going to end up in this situation where you need to be able to find stuff fast you need to have a top forty all my projects like the cut houses the foreclosures if you were to ask me I could walk over get my laptop I could find in the top twenty the top forty it wouldn't take me very long I have all that stuff organized more questions about please are you using your laptop in the field and then the same laptop when you get back to your studio or is it a second computer? I largely used the same a macbook air and I am largely used a mac book air for everything I have an older mac book pro over here which ironically is about is, like five years older. So the processor in this and the processor and this, we're about the same. But this is the one where there's a large light room job or something. I'll put it on there, and it might take two or three hours to do a few hundred pictures. But that set up just for image processing, because the problem I have is that I don't want to be trying to move too many files back before they feel like I'm gonna lose track of stuff. So my, my, um, road computer is also my primary work computer.