A busy May

Its been a busy May – the Sports Workshop in Colorado Springs was a great chance to learn about new lighting techniques, the new Elinchrom Quadra, and the new FlexTT5 series of wireless transmitters for the Nikon camera line. TTL flash photography was never so flexible!

On the prowl

Immediately upon leaving Colorado Springs, it was off to Africa for our small group workshop in Botswana and Zimbabwe. We visited 3 Wilderness Safari camps, including Duma Tau, Chitabe, and Little Makalolo in Zimbabwe, finishing with a night in Victoria Falls. The amount of water going over the falls was simply awe inspiring! There was so much spray coming off the falls, it was just like a rainforest. You could hardly take an image without the camera and lens being deluged in water. The best was when our pilot flew us over the falls at a couple thousand feet…now THAT was a view.

Coming back from Africa, I thought a lot about how to manage the thousands of images I had taken in those 12 days. Of course, I had deleted hundered each day – there is always brush to worry about, a slight out of focus shutter release, or one subject walking in front of the other… And then there are the times a photographer dreams of – a subject so irrestible and available you cannot resist taking image after image… later, you have to decide which is the best to keep as you look at multiple images of the same pose… slight differences make each different, but barely. Is there a catchlight in the eye, does the use of the space seem right, is the light better in one image vs another? Is the focus on the eye, or on some other part of the subject? So many factors to consider…. so many images to evaluate.

So we will be talking about this workflow issue the next few installments on the blog. While I will discuss the software I use, I maintain it does not generally matter what software you use… its how you use its features to accomplish the basic functions – renaming files, inserting metadata ( keywords, copyright, location, etc), sorting files, tagging unwanted images for deletion, and preparation for display… and as photographers, we always want to share our work with others! Web, email, DVD, social media…. there are multiple ways to share your images with others! The software is a tool for you to use to accomplish the tasks above… which one you use is a personal choice. Maintaining flexibility so you can move to new options later or as you become more sophisticated in your image processing is an important consideration which I will discuss in future articles.