Workflow workflow workbloodyflow!

Not so very long ago I was having a grump about my rigorous observance of workflow. Or rather, lack of it.
Which is unusual for me… not the grumping bit (that’s fairly standard) but the failure to observe a workflow routine. Cos I’m normally pretty good. Well, at that at least. If nothing else.

In fact, it was only just into the start of last month that I was grumping about it, cos I seemed to have accumulated a huge backlog of pics that hadn’t been archived.
Which I then dealt with.

Only about three weeks ago you’ll note.

And in the intervening three weeks or so I haven’t really done all that much photo-wise.
Not so’s you’d notice.

So how the hell then have I managed to end up with another huge backlog of pics waiting archiving with which I had to deal before even thinking of starting on the batch of pics I shot yesterday?

It really is quite amazing.

A few shots here, a few shots there; and before you know it you’ve accumulated hundreds of the little buggers (something like 500+ in this particular instance).

Here’s how it normally works for me…

Having had a bit of a pic-taking sesh I’ll dump the lot into Lightroom (having transferred them to the infernal machine first of course. This is normally done soon as I get back home after a session cos a) it frees up the memory card which then goes straight back into the camera ready for “just in case”, and b) I’m generally a bit eager to see what I’ve managed to snap that’s usable… the on-camera LCD screen being totally not reliable. As I’ve observed several times before).
Do a preliminary edit of the batch, which principally consists of sorting into appropriate “collections” (usually by location… or sometimes topic) and then sorting out which ones are worth keeping and which are gonna be visiting the recycle bin.
Once that’s all done I’ll then plough through the lot again, collection by collection, selecting those that I want to upload to Flickr (or whatever else may need to be done with them as an “end result”).
What this usually means is that I still end up with something like 50%-60% of shots that’ll never see the light of day (though I’ll still hang on to them… er… “just in case”).

Then the real work of processing begins, which is where I try to knock the final edits into some sort of presentable shape. (And usually end up rejecting a few at this stage as well!)
Fortunately this particular stage of the procedure doesn’t take too long normally cos I’m a firm believer in trying to keep post-processing to an absolute minimum. In my book the ideal to aim for is to get the pic as right as possible in-camera first.

That done, I then export from Lightroom in various formats (generally web-optimised for Flickr or elsewhere, full-size HiRes JPEGs, and a compressed version of the processed RAW files).

So far, so good.

Then the “front end” fun begins. Which could be uploading to Flickr. Or some other site. Or creating a zip file and emailing to somewhere (or maybe dumping to one or another of my various hosting services (ye gods… I seem to have so many of them!) from where the end-user can grab the file). Or burning to a CD. Or whatever.
If it’s exporting to Flickr then that usually entails a whole load of other work getting them appropriately tagged and into some sort of order within the sets etc I’ve created for my photostream. And of course very often writing a post about the session for this ‘ere blog. Etc etc etc.

Front end finished with I then generally wait a coupla days to see if there are any “issues arising”. Absent which, I set about archiving.
Which basically entails backing everything up (all versions of the files, including the original unprocessed RAWs plus any related stuff I may have created such as flash slideshows etc) to two completely separate locations (one a networked file server, the other an external and portable hard drive). All sorted by location, date, camera etc.

(Don’t even think of asking what capacity storage I’ve got… its getting bloody ridiculous!)

And then, finally, removing the original imports from Lightroom.
There’s a mate of mine who’s constantly taking the micky out of me for my doing this cos apparently he uses Lightroom as his cataloguing app as well. What he doesn’t seem to appreciate though is that my current system resources (on my pic-processing machine) really don’t like Lightroom running with a huge database (no matter how much optimisation of it that I may do) so I’ve found it easier and more efficient to use LR simply as my “processing lab” so to speak.

(Incidentally, for anyone who’s interested, I now use FotoStation Pro as my cataloguing app. Bloody good it is too!)

Each to their own is what I say.

Basically then that’s my “workflow model”, and most of the time I stick to it pretty rigorously. Have to really else I’d end up in a right old muddle, with files cluttering up everywhere and not being able to find a bloody thing. (Which, curiously, sounds to me very much like my mate… the one that uses Lightroom as his catalogue. Hmm.)

Easy, you’d have thought. Easy and smooth, no trouble at all once the routine’s established. Become habitual sorta thing.
Apart from recently so it seems.

So, as I said, had to tackle yet another mysteriously acquired backlog before processing yesterday’s pics. In the course of doing which I came across the little pic featured at the top of this post that it seems, for some bizarre reason, I’d failed completely to even import into Lightroom despite its having been part of a batch taken a while ago now. How strange.

And of course its what prompted this little moan. There now, hasn’t it been entertaining?