David Bergman on Workflow

I recently had the chance to see, renowned concert/sports photographer, David Bergman talk about how he uses Aperture to cull unwanted images and enhance and correct the selects from a shoot. Surprisingly, his daily workflow is not much different than what I have come up with, aside from the fact that I don't use Aperture (mostly because of the fact that it will not run on my Powerbook G4) and he has way more photos and selects to deal with. However, when I had a beta copy of Lightroom (which did run on my Powerbook), it is what I found to work quite well.

Anyway, the basic workflow is the following:

1. Import your entire shoot and add metadata to all the images. copyright info, short summary perhaps of the shoot. This is useful for quick searches through the library later in life. The copyright information, obviously can just save some legal hassle later.
2. Glance at every photo and give it a 1 star rating if it's something that might have potential.
3. Filter out your view to only shots that have 1 star. By this time, you've probably cut the number of shots down by at least half, if not more.
4. Relook at the 1 star images and give it a 2nd star if and only if it's worth spending more time on. You can use a bit more time to decide this, and for similar shots select only the best of them.
5. Filter out your view to only shots that have 2 stars. Now, here is where David's approach is a bit different. He relooks and filters to 3 stars and reserves 4 and 5 stars for exceptionally good photos he wants to use in his portfolio. I on the other hand am not on the same caliber as him and would have next to no shots left if I went to 3 stars, let alone 4 or 5.
6. Correct

After you make your initial selects, which should be a small fraction of the images you shot initially, it's time to make some corrections, crop and perform other edits (in Photoshop or wherever). The next part, for me, is bad because it allows for too much experimenting. For David, his formula works great and it's something I might try when I get some more computing power to power the free copy of Aperture Apple gave me for attending David's talk (Thanks Apple!).

David has sort of a set formula for the sliders and tools he touches and hardly ever strays from it, but makes sure to always correct the white balance first. Then he'll adjust the exposure as needed, possibly warm up the temperature a bit (on the photo, his office is air conditioned) and then turn on the visual display of highlights and black points. He'll then decide what's appropriate for the scene and use the recovery tool to get back some highlights and similarly with the black points.

At this point, the initial image should look pretty good and he'll decide whether or not he wants to use the settings from this picture as the settings for others and if so he'll apply them to the others and continue on. He'll then crop and, if necessary, add a slight vignette.

My correction flow is a lot different, and it's the part of his presentation that I took the most away from. It's possible to get great photographs by doing very little extra work. I used to go through all the sliders and experiment, but I now know it's not necessary, so I'll just not touch them.

You'd never think such a simple flow would work, but it seems to, and I saw him perform it right before my very eyes.

Gregory Crewdson TV Interview

I happened to catch part of an interview with surrealist photographer Gregory Crewdson, on CBS Sunday Morning. The interview, as of right now, is in their videos section titled "Portrait Of A Photographer (6:59)."

100 Strangers

If you wanna get good at street portraits, there's no better way to do it than to actually take them. Luckily, 100 Strangers is challenging you. They've got some tips to get you started and as an added bonus, it's actually a Flickr group, so it's relevant to this blog (my attempts at humor are horrible).

Ritz Camera Earth Day Special

Ritz Camera, yesterday launched a Special Edition Nikon Coolpix S52 (which isn't even out yet), for Earth Day (Happy belated Earth Day!). The camera is green and for each purchase, Ritz will purchase enough carbon credits to offset 1.91 tons of carbon dioxide from Carbon Fund. Check out the eco-friendly details.

Save Polaroid Film!

For some reason I don't remember posting about the announcement by Polaroid to discontinue all of it's instant film in the coming year (take a look at this chart). There are many people shooting and relying on instant film and so naturally, a new campaign to "Save Polaroid" has started. Sign the petitions, even if you don't shoot polaroid, you may discover it in the future (like I was hoping to do).

PictPicture

"PictPicture is a place for photographers to upload their work to be voted on by the community. Once an image receives enough votes it graduates from the upcoming page to the front page of the site. It's a great way for photographers to get their work seen and their sites exposure. Photographers just have to register and create a profile to start submitting images."

Basically, it's a photo centric reddit. Not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just not that innovative, at least at first glance. When you think deeper about what it is, it's really a different way to do critiques, but will it work? Obviously more people are going to vote on images that are popular, because they're put right in front of them. I'd love to see PictPicture, focus their attention on creating a great photo browser that changes the way we view online pictures. Something where, PictPicture becomes the definitive way to do community driven critiques.

I really like Greg Girard's portfolio.

Andrej Belic has a great underwater photography portfolio.

A Really Big Show

Vincent Laforet talks about his new found love for Tilt-shift photography for taking sports shots.

You too can fake this technique on already shot images with Photoshop and some know how.

Hirshhorn: Wolfgang Tillmans

I encourage everyone to go check out Wolfgang Tillmans' exhibition at the Hirshhorn, in Washington DC. It's free and amazing. This is of course if you are in the DC area, or are planning to travel to the DC area before August 12th, 2007.

Top Photography Blogs

If you're just learning about digital photography (or film) in your spare time, as I am, or are a full time studio shooter, traveler, or other paid camera-slinger you undoubtably subscribe to some photography magazines. I for one keep getting Outdoor Photographer even though my subscription ran out; thanks! I also subscribe to ShutterBug. I find that ShutterBug is insightful for thinking about new techniques and equipment to buy, whilst Outdoor Photographer is mostly just inspiring with some sprinkles of technique. Both magazines, I think are geared more towards learning than say, American Photo or any of those artsy or journalism ones. (Note: I love "artsy" photography, I just don't subscribe.)

However, the purpose of this blog isn't necessarily to point out good magazines that you can get in print, although I guess that might not be a bad idea for a future article about off-screen learning, but in fact it is about the numerous resources of the World Wide Web. There are many great blogs out there that update their content much more regularly than I, and in fact with much more insightful and useful tips and articles. That isn't to say that you should stop reading Photub of course. If you've been a reader of Photub for any length of time, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The blogs that I am listing in this post, are blogs that I consider great additions to your RSS subscriptions—those blogs that probably have enough new content for books or bi-monthly magazines in themselves:

In no particular order...

1. The Online Photographer: The Online Photographer packs a wallop of new commentary, reviews, techniques and personal adventures into a blog that is updated fairly frequently.
2. Photocritic: Perhaps one of my favorite blogs, is this one. The authors always have something interesting to share, and do a good job presenting it. The critiques that are occassionally done are quite helpful to new and upcoming photographers, and the DIY attitude helps create some really useful and fun tools. Of note is the DIY Pringles can macro lens, that I have been wanting to try out.
3. Strobist: Everything you'd ever want or need to know about effective flash photography is right here in this blog. Literally courses of information are contained on the pages of this blog. It's also not all about flash photography. Consider the recent series about Flickr and what it can do for your photography career. Insightful articles, interesting topics and amazing techniques make this truely one of the best photography blogs on the internet.
4. Photojojo: While not really a blog per se, Photojojo's unique style and unique media (email newsletter), make it in a class of it's own. I include it in this list because they do have an RSS feed, making it "blog like." I have just one complaint about Photojojo and that is that they often seem to post stuff late, after it's already been posted elsewhere. Nevertheless, Photojojo has knocked my socks off more than a few times with interesting ideas, it's creative writing style and overall growth.
5. Digital Photography School: Anyone looking for tips can always find something at DPS. Choose a "Random Tip" or read them all. It's easily becoming an encyclopedia of techniques, buying tips, etc. for the beginner, casual student and the advanced amateur.
6. Andy Frazer's Night Photography Blog: Taking pictures at night can yeild some extremely interesting results, but not many will give you insight on creating breathtaking images at night without the flash. Andy Frazer does. You'll see lots of examples of compelling night imagery, if nothing else.
7. After Capture: The only site listed here, that actually is a monthly publication, actually has a decent blog. The blog talks, interestingly enough, about post production of your images. Becomming a "post production prince" might not happen overnight, but it'll probably happen faster with the reading of some of the articles here.
8. DIYPhotography.net: Face it, photography equipment is expensive, and we see time and time again, that a cheap light tent provides excellent results. DIYPhotography.net is all about creating cheap equipment to aide in the creation of great photographs. It's a wonderful collection and continues to grow.

The web is full of great content, and with RSS being used by nearly everyone, there certainly isn't any reason (other than time) that you can't be informed of the latest photography happenings, techniques and ideas every 15 or 20 minutes. Surely there are other great blogs out there that I did not address, but these are the ones I read on a semi-daily basis. If you think your blog should be on this list, please submit it for review, and I'll take a look.

Galleries to Look At

"I gave a homeless kid a camera" is a forum post of a collection of images a homeless kid took in CA, after being given a camera and some film.

Photo Competitions for Learning

As someone who thinks about taking photos much more often than I actually take photos, I find myself interested in the idea of photography competitions. Not for the reasons of glory, or great prizes but for the aspect not always thought of, the learning.

Taking photos for a competition gives you some goal to focus your attention on. Take for instance the Staples Hometown View contest I recently posted about, where you are asked to "Upload a picture highlighting what you love about your hometown." This has a broad range, but it still starts to funnel your focus towards something. Many, right away will begin to think about particular topics that they might shoot for the contest. I thought of a few, and instantly started to think about how I would compose my shot, what time of day would add the most to my composition and what conditions would be perfect. This sort of behavior is essential to learning about anything. It's called thinking.

However, too much thinking can also lead to bad shots. There is some sort of balance that as an amateur I have yet to figure out. Yesterday, for instance, I attended a technical talk on software patents and brought my camera. The conditions weren't perfect, but I had planned out how to take the photo I wanted of the speaker on stage. Waiting for just the right moment, I was rushed to focus, compose and shoot. My exposure was nearly on point, but my focus was off and the photo didn't turn out so well. And, because I was picky about the shot and over thought about everything, I only had one chance and I blew it.

My experience yesterday taught me to be more aggressive while taking photos, but still plan for my shots. If I had fired off 100 shots yesterday, not only would it have been annoying for members of the audience and the speaker, I would have missed the reason I was there to begin with. But, had I been a bit more aggressive and readapted my plan as conditions changed, I would have been able to obtain a few more shots while still being a good audience member. They may have suffered the same "badness," but nevertheless I could have made sure to fix what didn't work before.

Unless you are an expert photographer, you are not going to be able to see the outcome of all situations. Likewise, in order to become an expert you have to think about what the outcome will be for all of the situations you photograph. This is because in order to learn from your photography, you must compare your perceived results with your actual results. Trial and error so to speak, but without planning you'll have way too many perceived results to maintain and to analyze afterwards.

So take a look at Photography Competitions, a site where you can see a number of current contests around the internet and plan to take photos for them. Plan your shots before you pick up your camera and adjust your composition and your original thoughts on location a few times. Does your original idea still make sense now that you are at the location? Look through the viewfinder and think about your composition before firing the shot. And of course, after you take the shots go back and look at them. What worked? What didn't work? Can any of the shots be readjusted to make it better and maybe be entered in the competition (assuming you can go back to the location)?

Photography Competitions don't have to be about winning or losing or even entering a photo. Often times, you might get the benefit of critique from other contestents or judges, but the ideas that they present to be photographed are the true beauty of them.

Running From Camera

Running From Camera is a photo blog in which the photographer runs as fast as he can from his camera, before the 2 second self-timer captures him.

His other blog, though less unique is equally interesting.

Hometown Views Photo Contest

Staples is sponsoring a photo contest. The Hometown Views Photo Contest, is looking for pictures that highlight what you love about your hometown. One Grand Prize Winner will receive a 5-day/4-night photography adventure for two to Reykjavik, Iceland and a chance to make $5000 in comission from selling prints in Staple's stores nationwide. 40 Finalists also get a chance to make $5000 and for everyone's efforts, you'll get a free 12"x18" print of one of your photos.

The Hometown Views Photo Contest will accept entries until March 15th, and is limited to 1 entry per person.

You've got a ton of time and nothing to lose, so start snapping pictures now. I propose we tag entries/potential entries on Flickr with 'hometownview'. I wanna see what people come up with.

I wouldn't do this with any camera I loved, but if I had a camera laying around I didn't care about...

I am NOT responsible for broken cameras as a result of tossing.

You Look Bored--Try Photogmo

Photogmo is simply put a challenge. Take a photo of the current topic, post it and perhaps get some feedback. It's not an original concept, but the name is awesome!

One Shot at the Top of the World

Vincent Laforet's work is absolutely stunning, and one of his latest projects is featured in an Aperture profile. The project: Capture a worker on the Chrysler building in New York City a top one of the gargoyles overlooking the city. The result: awesome.

A Hopeful Vision

An inspiring article about Steve Simon, who just launched a book "Heroines & Heroes: Hope, HIV and Africa." The book is a limited edition (50 copies) and is available on his site.

From the article on Digital Journalist:
"Steve Simon's latest book, Heroines & Heroes: Hope, HIV and Africa, balances human tragedy with hope in sub-Saharan Africa."