As a photographer, getting the shot remains our primary goal. However, your post-photography shoot workflow can determine the success or failure of the shoot. Countless methods and programs exist to assist us in processing, storing, and sharing our work. In this blog I want to walk you through my workflow and how I strive to ensure that I organize, protect, and store the photographs I take. The goal is not for you to follow my process – I know that better ones exist! The intent is to encourage you to think through and establish a defined workflow that you follow every time you complete a photography shoot. Additionally, I’ll point out some pitfalls I have encountered along the way.
Memory Cards - Before and During a Photography Shoot
Let’s start with memory cards, because the workflow after the shoot starts with them. When preparing for a photography shoot, memory cards deserve key consideration. Investing in good quality, high speed cards rewards every penny you spend. Before a shoot, I put my cards in my cameras, make sure they are formatted, and place extra cards in my card wallet. Having extra cards matters. Finding yourself in the middle of nowhere and realizing you have run out of space on your camera cards creates a photographer’s nightmare. Plus, cards do get damaged. I have lost what could have potentially been really great photos when a card malfunctioned.
Of course, getting home with your camera cards is of paramount importance. So, develop a method for switching your full card with a new one during a shoot. Where does the full card go? Do you have a case or slot in your bag that you always put the cards with images waiting for download? Do you just stick the card in your pocket thinking you will remember that it is there? I can say from experience that doing so provides a good way for an expensive card to get washed in the laundry, thus losing all of your images. Memory cards tend to malfunction after they experience the washer and dryer!
What about the process for handling memory cards when traveling for multiple days? Consider these important factors:
- Do you have a method to keep used cards separate from ready to use ones until you load them on a drive?
- Should you travel with a laptop and external hard drive to download images each evening?
- If so, do you keep both the copy on the memory card and the copy on an external hard drive until you get home for redundancy? Do you have enough cards to do this?
- Can you rely on uploading to the cloud each night? What if you find yourself in a location where that isn’t possible?
In summary, start your process with having a sufficient number of high quality, formatted memory cards. Additionally, develop a consistent workflow for both handling cards during a shoot and for storing cards and/or downloading cards to storage device / cloud when you travel.
After the Photography Shoot - Saving Images
As I mentioned, every photographer has a different workflow. My key goal is to give you some pointers to think about to improve your process or make your process more consistent. My basic workflow after a photography shoot follows this pattern.
First Step:
Using my desktop computer and a card reader, I load images from the memory cards to an external hard drive (such as a 5 TB Western Digital drive). I maintain a separate external hard drive with my raw images for each calendar year. I label my folders on the external hard drives in a consistent manner using a date first format. I strive to maintain absolute consistency. I recommend that you develop a system that works for you. Write it down if you need to. These external drives serve as my 1st level of backup.
Second Step:
I bring the images from the yearly external hard drive into Lightroom which I store on drives in my ThunderBay External Storage Enclosure. Here again I follow a consistent naming and tagging system for the groups of images. The ThunderBay External Storage Enclosure has multiple drives that maintain redundant copies of my Lightroom catalog and images. This creates a 2nd level of backup. None of my images live directly on my desktop or laptop computer. The computer just serves as the interface for processing.
At this point in my post-photography shoot workflow, I am ready to review, cull, and process images. Of course, for images that I share to social media, I export downsized jpgs into a social media file. For images that I include on my online store, I process and export them to a collection of print files that I maintain for easy access.
Third Step:
The third step actually happens in the background. The ThunderBay connects to an automatic backup system stored in the cloud. This creates my 3rd level of backup. This cloud backup proved critical when my previous Drobo external storage enclosure malfunctioned. The cloud backup allowed me to switch to the current ThunderBay replacement system and to rebuild my Lightroom library.
Final Step:
The final step of my workflow involves reformatting the memory cards I just loaded. Once I have ensured that all images have been successfully loaded on my drives, then I reformat the memory cards for the next photography shoot.
Additional Thoughts on Backups
Redundant backups prove critical for any important electronic data. Having an affordable and reliable system can overwhelm individuals like myself who lack technical expertise. But from experience here are a couple of things that I have encountered to keep in mind when building your system. Firstly, a backup in the cloud is critical. When my Drobo system crashed, I did not lose my raw images which I stored on the separate yearly external drives, but I did lose my Lightroom library of processed images. Two decades of Lightroom photo processing work would have vanished overnight had I not maintained a backup of them in the cloud. Secondly, 1st and 2nd level hard drive back-ups should be stored in separate locations (and preferably in the cloud). The reason is that disasters will less likely impact two locations.
Summary
Having a successful photography shoot involves more than just what you do in the field. A consistent workflow for organizing, processing, and storing images proves critical, as well. It reduces the chance of losing images, helps you organize your files, and protects them from device failures. How consistent is your workflow after the photography shoot? Taking a little time to define your post-photography shoot workflow, document it as needed, and following it every time will pay off in the end.
If you would like to hear me discussing my workflow in a live interview at White House Custom Colour check out this YouTube video:
Additionally, go behind the scenes with White House Custom Colour and me on a nature photography shoot in Minnesota:
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