Photographic Workflow
Derek Smith • 11 May 2022
For a photographer, I feel that it’s important to have an efficient, and smooth workflow for editing, and storing images.
Quite often I will return home from a shoot, or weekend away, with several hundred images. I don’t want to be spending days in front of a computer, so my workflow consists of taking the SD card out of the camera, and using a card reader, copy all the images, then pasting them into an external hard drive.
Opening the photo editor, I edit the RAW images that I’ve just saved to the external hard drive, and a lot of this process involves “culling” images (sorry dear reader not all my images are just as I want them!!) probably only keeping about a quarter of the images taken on that session.
In the photo editor I will quite often use a template, or a pre-set to apply to the image, this is for consistency, as well as speed, one example of this is where I have been on a portrait shoot and want the images to have the same “style” to present to the model following the shoot. After applying the template, or pre-set, I will crop the image if required, then save the edited finished image to a temporary folder on the computer hard drive, I have named my folder “Upload”.
With all my edited images in the temporary “Upload” folder, I upload all these images to a personal photographic website powered by SmugMug, (it costs about £50 annually) the folders on the website are organised by “Year” and “Month” for my personal images, “Glamour” and “Model” for my portrait work, as well as a folder for “Competitions”, these photos can be viewed on a mobile phone or tablet. I also import the photos from the “Upload” folder to my Apple Photos, and these are backed up again to Google Photos, and Amazon Prime Photos. After uploading all my images, I delete all the images from the temporary “Upload” folder ready for the next photo editing session.
I truly believe in safeguarding photographic images by storing them away from the computer, I have found Google Photos very useful for locating images for competitions as the search facility is very good. Recently while selecting an image for the “Derelict Buildings” competition I remembered a photo I had taken in Grimsby, but a couple of years ago, Google Photos found the image within minutes.
Quite often I will return home from a shoot, or weekend away, with several hundred images. I don’t want to be spending days in front of a computer, so my workflow consists of taking the SD card out of the camera, and using a card reader, copy all the images, then pasting them into an external hard drive.
Opening the photo editor, I edit the RAW images that I’ve just saved to the external hard drive, and a lot of this process involves “culling” images (sorry dear reader not all my images are just as I want them!!) probably only keeping about a quarter of the images taken on that session.
In the photo editor I will quite often use a template, or a pre-set to apply to the image, this is for consistency, as well as speed, one example of this is where I have been on a portrait shoot and want the images to have the same “style” to present to the model following the shoot. After applying the template, or pre-set, I will crop the image if required, then save the edited finished image to a temporary folder on the computer hard drive, I have named my folder “Upload”.
With all my edited images in the temporary “Upload” folder, I upload all these images to a personal photographic website powered by SmugMug, (it costs about £50 annually) the folders on the website are organised by “Year” and “Month” for my personal images, “Glamour” and “Model” for my portrait work, as well as a folder for “Competitions”, these photos can be viewed on a mobile phone or tablet. I also import the photos from the “Upload” folder to my Apple Photos, and these are backed up again to Google Photos, and Amazon Prime Photos. After uploading all my images, I delete all the images from the temporary “Upload” folder ready for the next photo editing session.
I truly believe in safeguarding photographic images by storing them away from the computer, I have found Google Photos very useful for locating images for competitions as the search facility is very good. Recently while selecting an image for the “Derelict Buildings” competition I remembered a photo I had taken in Grimsby, but a couple of years ago, Google Photos found the image within minutes.
Louth Photographic Society
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Roger Hance Memorial Lecture 16th October
Last night Lee Dixon from Cleethorpes Camera Club gave his first ever presentation to a camera club, which we were privileged to view. His presentation consisted of portraiture, creative, and his genre of choice; wildlife. Lee is an extremely talented photographer, with a highly creative portfolio, his portraits are quite atmospheric, unusual, and capture the essence of the model, and scene. For Lee’s creative work, he buys props from charity shops, often very cheaply, reusing those props in various scenes. For his composite work he will often take one of his photos of a room, and blend it with a subject in Photoshop using “blend” modes. For wildlife he visited Lake Kerkini in Greece to photograph the Pelicans, if the sky is a little on the bland side, Lee will often over expose the image resulting in a striking white background to the subject. On safari in Africa Lee showed us some amazing images of the wildlife, the close-up images of elephants, the wildebeest migration, and this stunning image of a cheetah. Lee was ably assisted by Mike Bennett. More of Lee’s work can be found on his website: https://leedixonphoto.co.uk/ Lee his kindly given permission for his images to be used in this post. Many thanks to Lee, and Mike for an amazing evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club we held our monthly PDI competition, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open", there was a very high-quality entry in both competitions and judge Mike Bennett had quite a job on his hands scoring the entries. Well, done to Dave Turner for first place in the Objects in the Air and Tony Gaskins for first place in the Open. All the results are on our website. This week, Wednesday 30th September, our speaker will be Lee Dixon from Cleethorpes Camera Club showing us his natural history, Creative and many other photographs he has taken. It will be the first time Lee has shown his photographs at our club. If anyone else wants to enter PDI's in the 2027 N&EMPF Exhibition, the deadline is this Wednesday at midnight. Harry is still taking entries for the PDI competition, with the categories of "Local Straight from Camera" (unedited .jpg), and "Open", to be held on Wednesday 7th October. Regards Graham
At the meeting last night Mike Bennett judged our competition with the categories of “Objects in the Air”, and “Open”. The standard of entries was excellent, and it gave Mike a tough task of judging the images, Mike gave some very good critique of the images displayed, the feedback helps members to develop compositional skills. Dave Turner was awarded first place for his image of the “Tiger Club Display Team” in the “Objects in the Air” category. Tony Gaskins was awarded first place for his image of the “Spectacular Rustgill” in the “Open” category.
Good Morning All, Last week at the club we watched the N&EMPF PDI Exhibition for 2026, it was a very good evening viewing very high standard images from all over the East Midlands. Dave Turner and I did manage to get images accepted; there is a full report on our website. This week, Wednesday 23rd September, we will hold our monthly PDI competition, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open", please send entries to Harry by midnight tonight. Harry is also accepting images for the PDI competition, with the categories of "Local Straight out of the Camera (only resizing permitted)" and "Open". Regards Graham
Members were shown the 2026 N&EMPF PDI Exhibition video last night with all of the accepted PDI images in the first part, and after the break the awarded PDI images. There were some stunning images on view, and Louth was successful in having 3 PDI images accepted, Graham Harrison with his image of a Stonechat, and Dave Turner with his portrait of Paul Rudd, and his monochrome image of Kings Cross railway station "Going Down". Overall it was a good inspirational evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club members had 15 minutes to show what they had done over the summer. It was a very interesting evening with eight members taking part. There were many locations on show and as usual some excellent photography. There is a full report on our blog. This week, Wednesday 16th September, we will be showing the N&EMPF exhibition, this is part one showing all the PDI's that were accepted. This is the highest standard of photography we as individuals take part in as a club. Members sent around 50 entries but only 3 were accepted. If you are inspired to enter the 2027 Exhibition after seeing the show, I send the clubs entries and I can give you more information. Closing date is the end of September. The Maximum size for N&EMPF is 1600 x 1200 3MB sRGB Harry is still taking entries for the monthly PDI competition, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open". Harry did ask about what can be accepted, and we couldn't really say as long as it's an object in the Air. The best way is to look up the definition of an object first. Harry is also accepting entries for the Local and Open competition in October. Robin is going to judge the Open competition, does anyone fancy judging the "Straight from the camera" category? Regards Graham
The Louth Photographic Society has returned after the summer break. It was an incredible return, with members providing us with some stunning images from over the summer break. A full, and varied smorgasbord of well executed photos, many of us visited Whitby, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, and further north images from Staithes, and Sandbanks. Tony showed us his long exposure minimalist calming coastal scenes, from the Lincolnshire coast, and Whitby.. Chris brought us some beautiful photos taken of local churches, many of which many of us have never seen. Now I’ve never really seen the attraction of an expensive Leica camera, but when Mark showed his photos from his visit to the German Leica factory in Wetzlar, I now understand, camera bodies, and lenses milled from solid blocks of aluminium, hand polished, hand finished lens glass, and textured leather applied to the camera body, not a robot in sight, just craftsmen, and women making a superb photographic instrument. Sue brought us “pink” ladies driving tractors to raise money for cancer research. Last but definitely not least Richard showed his monochrome, and infrared images of trees, his compositions, and photographic eye bring these tree studies to life, we appreciate them even if some judges don’t understand. Many thanks to all of those members who contributed.
Good Morning All We spent last week on the Isle of Wight visiting many of the attractions. This week, Wednesday 9th September, we are back at the club with 15-minute PDI shows of what you did during the summer break, I have Derek Smith, Tony Gaskins, Harry Kerman, Chris Birchmore and Richard Hildred on the list, if I have missed you off, please let me know. I should be there but could be late as away playing golf. Harry is taking entries for the September PDI competition, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open". Harry will miss the October local competition but will sort the entries out for us, The competition categories will be "Local-Not Edited" and "Open". We judge this competition in house so could do with two volunteers to judge. The local competition is a .jpeg photograph taken and straight from the camera, no cropping, or post processing etc, like the old days taken no more than 25 miles from St James church. Regards Graham
