This post is primarily for other photographers that read this blog. I have a lot of visits here, and many are photographers. So, an associate of mine had this idea that we should all post our workflow. In case you don’t know, the workflow a photographer uses to create their work is probably more important than the shooting because it’s where all the time is spent. I used to spend endless hours working on this stuff. But, over the years I’ve refined my process into a well-oiled machine. The idea is to spend only the absolute minimum amount of time behind the computer but to also mazimize the results. If you went unchecked, you could spend weeks editing a wedding. Some people tell me they take up to 80 hours to edit a wedding. I used to be like that. But, it’s unnecessary. You just have to think hard about the steps you are taking and understand why you are doing things the way you are. Below is the process I use. Every photographer is different in how they work, the tools and software they use and how they approach things. Anyway, the idea is to share on our blogs and maybe we can learn something from each other. Here’s my workflow in a nut shell. The only thing is, this doesn’t include albums and print orders and other things like that. This is just the weekly routine of processing a wedding.
Workflow
- Download cards into a folder called “Download/<Wedding Date B&G Name>”
- Make a duplicate copy on two external harddrives.
- Make another duplicate copy on a 3rd hardrive via software called Second Copy. This is done while sleeping.
- Open PhotoMechanic and select all the keepers. I just select #1 and that turns the keepers green. This process is very fast. Maybe an hour tops.
- Create a folder called Delete and put all the non-selected images in that folder. These are mainly blurry, blinky images and just really bad ones. Yes, professional photographers do take bad shots. It’s just that we take more good ones than non-pro photographers.
- Open Lightroom and import the folder of selected images
- Go to work on the images. I try to do them all in one sitting. This takes a few hours, it just depends on how many images and how much work is required. If I shot well, and little correction is needed (which is usually the case), this can be pretty fast.
- Export jpegs (level 80) into a folder called “jpegs”.
- Upload the jpegs to the client online gallery
- Blog it!
- Burn jpegs to client DVD.
- Copy completed folder to 2 external HD’s, and delete previous back up on same HD’s. All finished work is now on these HD’s.
- Also, make duplicates of the finished jpegs onto 2 other separate external drives. I know have 4 copies of the finished work.
- Delete the folder from the main drive.
This entire process consumes about a full 8 hour day from beginning to end. But, often while things are importing, or while I’m waiting for the cards to download, or whatever, I start doing other things, so it can take up to a week or so. But, the work is probably about 8 hours of real time sitting at the computer doing things. If we include an album, that’s a completely different thing and adds many, many hours to the process. Probably at least 80 hours or more.
I hope someone learns something from this.
Cheers,
Jerry
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Hey Chris, great question. I might shoot say 3000 images at a wedding, but I’ll deliver maybe around 400 to 800 depending on the event. I don’t want to spend the time importing images I’ll never use. So, I edit first, import the keepers, and this saves me hours.
Great blog you got here. I don’t have Photomechanic, butI’m curious what the benefit of flagging your keepers in photomechanic as opposed to LR?