This is going to be a fairly long post by the sounds of it.

Ingestion
You may call this importing, getting the pictures from the camera or, collecting. I call it ingestion because that’s the program I use for the task. It’s called Image Ingester Pro 3. It’s a fairly straight forward program with an amazing capacity to be expanded to your specific criteria. You can download from half a dozen cards at the same time and upon import, all of your files get metadata and tagged so you don’t have to go in individually.
Metadata is the information stored in your picture like creator, location, copyright information, etc. Your camera adds metadata such as camera model, lens, date, time, aperture, shutter speed and so on. I can choose where I import to and what it’s called as well. I rename all of my files on import to Kerr_YYYYMMDD_0001.nef. I use my name, followed by the year, month and day, to easily find the images by date and then the original file number used by the camera. You might notice that I also use the original RAW extension as well, I convert to .dng later in the process.

Outtakes
After the Ingestion I open up the folder that I ingested it to (see the file structure above) in Bridge and start checking out the pictures for the first time. I have 5 ratings that I commonly use. The first is the green label. It tells me that this photo can be deleted and is no good. Second rating is blank, nothing to the label. Not a good shot, but something that I might use or could use. The third, fourth and fifth are star ratings 1, 2 and 3 respectively. One star is cool, two is edit this and three is wow. I don’t use the 4 or 5 star ratings because I’m using them for client choices or just when I need to expand my ratings. Once I’m done rating I add keywords backups of my ratings so that I don’t lose the rating. I do this in the form of MK:One Star, MK:Neutral (Initials:Rating). The initials just keep everything together in the keyword clouds.

Conversion
Here I’m just opening the files in Camera Raw (ctrl or cmd + R in bridge) and re-saving them further down in my workflow as .dng (Adobe’s Digital Negative format). I don’t change the filename other than the extension (.nef to .dng). The files get saved to the archive portion of my hard drive and stay there.

Catalog
Why don’t I use Lightroom from the beginning? All of the programs that I’ve used above were designed specifically for that function. Unlike Lightroom, which is designed to do all of the above, I find it doesn’t complete these tasks as well or fast enough for my liking. Although, it is possible to do most or all of the stuff above strictly in Lightroom. I use the program for cataloging only. I import to lightrooms catologs that I’ve created specifically for that shoot or that client or even as broad as the genre of the pictures. Once this is done the files never move on my drive again.

Export
I go through the final images that I’ve picked out (1 or 2 star rated) and pick a few here and there to do some post-production on in Photoshop. I export the files to a different hard drive so that my originals and my derivatives are on different disks. I export as a .psd at 300 ppi and add the new file back to the catalog so that when I look at the original file in Lightroom, a copy of the derivative is right next to it for comparison.

Post Production
Not much about post production can be said here. Save lots and always use a tonne of layers. I can go through in a future post about my workflow in Photoshop if there is enough interest.

Backup
I use a couple of programs and ways of backing up my data. First off is Microsoft Synctoy 2.0, I use this to duplicate my original files on to another drive. I also use it to copy all files to my networked server that’s running 1.5 terabytes of space.
All in all I have a 500gb drive for originals, 500gb backup of orginals and a 320gb for derivative. All of the originals get backed up to DVD and stored seperately from my computer. All of the above gets backed up to the server twice. Yes, it goes on the server on two different drives in case there is a drive failure there.

It may seem like a lot of steps and even more trouble than it worth. But believe me, if I had followed this workflow, I would have the images here in this post instead of somewhere in my array of computers, memory cards and hard drives.  A couple of resources for more stuff like this is The DAM Book and the forum online as well as the Image Ingester site.

In my next post I’ll be putting up some production pictures as well as a shot of the final image (next post because I misplaced the production pictures somewhere on my computer). I’m going to try and do some night shots with it and some portraits. I’m also trying to figure out a good way of shooting strobes with it too. I might blind my subjects before I get them exposed, but it’s probably worth it.

Don’t forget to vote for this photoblog at the 2009 Photoblog Awards!

I downloaded the beta on the first day it was available. When I checked the forums for it, there was one post. Cool. So far my impressions with the new Lr have been good. It’s fast at loading, the import function has been redesigned, and switching modules is a breeze compared to previous versions.

I tried some intensive editing the other day and it hasn’t changed much. The brush function has some new features added to it and there is the renamed post-crop vignette in the effects section. The only other effect is called “film grain”. Film must truly be dead if you now have to run your digital file through a noise reduction process and then add grain. I digress. While I was doing my editing as I added more bits here and there, the program itself got slower and slower and slower. Nothing really new here. I do most of my editing in Photoshop for this very reason (white balance and general adjustments aside). So, in terms of an editing software, it’s still not as good as it could be. Don’t get me wrong though, an update is there for a reason.

All of the pictures here have been edited completely in Lr and in my opinion look as good as they would if they had been processed through Photoshop. However, I would have had this post up yesterday if I did them in Photoshop. I guess, if you’re a photographer who doesn’t need/want to do heavy processing, this is a great program and I encourage you to go to Adobe’s website and download the public beta. It’s free and it won’t hurt you.

Something else I noticed while playing with the program, you can’t view your Lr 2 catalogs just yet. Adobe has blocked them in the beta for now. I like this, it prevents me from completely destroying my current catalogs. I’ll keep playing with the program for the next couple of months and if I find anything else that is super important, I’ll post it here. Here are a couple more images that have been processed with Lr 3. Go ahead and click on the image to enlarge it.

Remember to vote for this blog a the 2009 Photoblog Awards. Link is at the top of the sidebar.

You may remember when the 5dMkII or 5d2 came out with 1080p video that there was a video posted by director/photographer Vincent Laforet. It was called Reverie. It was quick, to the point and a very expensive short. I liked it. And it was the first video of it’s kind to be shot on an still camera. Now, we have hundreds of great videos out there all shot on SLR cameras. One of my favourite at the moment is by a photographer in Atlanta, USA. Andrew Kornylak did a whole series on bouldering and rock climbing where he shot interviews with the Nikon D5000 and then did still-video with the Nikon D3 by just blasting away and getting a cool, stop motion like feel.

Here is one of the videos from Andrew.

You can’t always tell when it switches from the 720p video of the D5000 to the D3 which tops out at 11fps.

Unfortunately, Laforet’s newest movie Nocturne isn’t available at the moment because there seems to be some strife between Canon Inc. and Canon USA. Hopefully it will be up on the web soon. Of course you can always find it on YouTube. Because everything is on YouTube. Laforet wrote on his blog that he has agreed to take the video down until Canon gets it together. If you missed it, here is Vincent Laforet’s Reverie.

Just so you know, Nikon isn’t sitting by with there video/still cameras and not producing movies. Bill Frakes did an amazing video with the new Nikon D3s. And yes, ballerinas in Austrailia.