I’ve been asked numerous times by email as to what my photography workflow is. I thought I’d start with my “In The Field” workflow. Workflow will change on a person to person basis, so what I’m doing might not be the best solution in your case, but for what I do it works very well.
Step One: Take Images
My first step in the field is to complete my photo-shoot with my Canon EOS 350D, equip with two lenses, the Canon 17-55 1:3-5.5 and Canon EF 75-300 1:4-5.6 III – saving images onto my 2GB compact flash card.
Step Two: Empty Card
When the shoot is finished, I connect my CF card to my USB card reader (I need a new firewire card reader) – and I wait for the images to import into Aperture.
Step Three: Apply Metadata
When the images have been pulled into Aperture, I go through them and apply metadata. I fill the following fields at this stage: credit, copyright, and keywords.
Step Four: Rate Images
The next step in my workflow is to sift through my images as quickly as I can, rating them on the fly. Images with 5 starts are absolute favorites, only around 5% of my images make this status. Images with 4 starts are very creative and entertaining images, and 3 star images are photos I like and wouldn’t be ashamed to show people. I rarely apply 1 or 2 stars to my images.
Step Five: Export & Import
When I get back home to my studio machine, I export the project/s off my MacBook, then import the project to Aperture on my main desktop. This will keep all the ratings and meta-data in-tact and leaves me with one final step, to edit the images, and send them on their journey.
I’m very curious to see how you work with images when in the field so I can improve my ever changing workflow. So feel free to chip in below and leave me a note.