My digital workflow always moves towards simplification whenever possible. Taking thousands of photos a year, and needing to move them from a flat, RAW state, to a processed version ready for a stock photography sale takes time. If there is one lesson universal to age, it is that time takes on a more premium value. At this stage in the capture and post production process of a digital file, great leaps and bounds have been made in both camera sensors and post production software.

The image below is a good candidate to illustrate my approach in shooting a landscape whose end state requires taking Lightroom experience into the field. Any experienced landscape photographer knows that “sky control” is a fundamental factor for balancing tonality in an image. In the days of film, we all used split graduated neutral density filters, and applied the necessary style to the end of the lens given the demands of the scene. While these are still of value today, I use them quite infrequently. This is so because the quality of low ISO digital files and the local adjustments possible in Lightroom make the post production process fairly simple, and rather dramatic.

In this scene, I exposed for the sky as the dramatic clouds whirled over the McKinley river bar in Denali park. The colorful tundra in the foreground, is rendered nearly black. However, with a split grad filter in Lightroom applied (approximately 2.5 stops), the foreground comes to life. This degree of exposure change does introduce some noise in the shadows, but with noise reduction and a slight grain value applied, it resolves nicely.

One could have applied that 2 stop split grad in the field, but there is not always time, and conditions are not always conducive to doing so. When dynamic clouds are involved in a landscape scene, my experience tells me to shoot and shoot fast because the clouds change quickly and the once pleasing light play on the land can vanish in no time.

Original RAW capture, with the exposure made for the highlights in the clouds, rendering the foreground nearly black.

The same scene with approximately 2.5 stops of exposure correction to the foreground with a split grad in LR. Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105mm f/4L IS, (24mm), 1/125 sec @ f/11, ISO 100.

Male King Eider duck

Male king eider duck. Canon 1D Mark IV, 500mm f/4L IS w/2x, 1/320 sec @ f/8, ISO 200.

Earlier in the week I posted a photo of a male king eider duck that I took at midnight in Alaska ‘s arctic, under cloudy skies. In contrast, I wanted to share a photo of the same species, but under completely different lighting conditions.  I took this picture at 12 noon, about 12 hours later than the other frame (and not much sleep in between), and while I do not consider that an optimum time for shooting due to hot light and heavy contrast, this worked out o.k. Photographing a subject with white areas in mid day sunlight can be tricky, due to the tendency to blow out the bright highlights. My general approach to a subject in these conditions is to shoot in manual mode, find an exposure that does not overexpose the whites, use as low of an ISO as possible and then be super careful on the focus. The low ISO helps when it comes time to boost the shadows in Lightroom, which are fairly underexposed due to highlight preservation.

I’ve included a screen shot below that shows the initial capture, and the red highlight reveals a tiny bit of blown out area which was recoverable in the RAW post processing.

Initial screen capture exposure before corrections. The red spot reve

It might appear like I cranked the saturation in post production, but I really did not. Below is the final processing. I boosted the individual channels of blue and aqua saturation a little bit, but the brightness and fill light brought the color to life in the bird’s face. I also added a brightness brush to the bird’s face to bring in the eye a little bit.

Final adjustments in Lightroom

It is also worth noting that I took this shot with Canon’s new 2x converter on the 500mm, on a 1D Mark IV that equals 1,300mm! It is amazingly sharp, and this tight compression let me make the simplicity of composition and use of positive and negative space that I think makes the image pleasing. It also provides a creamy, blurry background, with a slight pattern.

In addition, the bird raised its neck slightly for a few exposures, which make for a regal posture, as opposed to a more squatty, compressed look. I’ve got a few king eider photos posted on my website, but will have more added soon.

Noatak river flows out of the Brooks range in the Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska. Canon 5D Mark III, 24-105 f/4L IS (28mm), 1/1000 @ f/5.6, ISO 400

I’m often asked if I shoot black and white. The answer is no, in general. My world is one of color, and while I appreciate both the constraints and liberties of excluding color from an image, I generally prefer the invoked psychological elements that the inclusion of color creates.

But throwing away color opens up some creative opportunities as well, and I’m fond of all imagery that exhibits a powerful use of light and composition. Just for fun, I thought I would play with this photo for a few minutes in Lightroom. It was a pretty quick rendition of the file by reducing the saturation to “0″ and then cranking the blacks and contrast. It creates a rich and energetic scene, which in reality, is far more dramatic than what the human eye actually saw.

I took the image while flying with Dirk Nickisch of Coyote Air, as we traversed across the Noatak river valley in Alaska’s Brooks range. If you have followed my blog, you already know that I’m particularly fond of the magnificent Brooks range. If you are open to the idea, it will change your life in just a few glances, through its sheer immensity and wild ruggedness–it is sort of a quick work of self reduction.

When shooting aerials–use a high, high, high shutter speed, reduce wind drag on the lens as much as possible, and isolate yourself from the plane vibration, and shoot a lot of frames.

Compare with the color version.

FONT SIZE

Thanks to Jeffrey’s Lightroom Configuration Manager, I was able to tweak/customize the size of the fonts along with the size of the metadata panel width. The online configure panel lets you designate the preferred font size for each specific meta data area and then it generates at .txt file that your put in the appropriately directory as described in the directions. (One note about that, if you are using Windows and you are supposed to put the file in the EN folder (for English), but can’t find it in the directory, just make a folder titled EN and then drop in the file).

SPELLCHECKING

I don’t know about you but I end up with many spelling errors in my Headlines, Titles, and Caption fields, and I use a bit of a work around at this point to correct that. (I know MAC has an OS based spellchecker but Windows does not at this time offer that–Come on Lightroom 4, bring us spell checking!).

What I do is export a text file of the Caption and Headline information from Media Expressions, a hideously bad program no longer supported by Microsoft but it does offer text exports in a pretty good fashion. (this is the only thing I do with that program now). Then I open that file in Word and run spell check on it. When I come across a misspelled word, I search for that word in the LR metadata text search field, and make the corrections in the necessary file(s). You can export a .txt file from Lightroom using a plugin from Photographer’s Toolbox, but it also requires the export of the image itself, and that can take a long time if you are dealing with many files. For now, my method is acceptable, although a little cumbersome. At least the images that will appear on my new website will be free of many, but perhaps not all, embarrassing spelling errors!

If anyone uses another method for this, please share.

Andrew in the office - the old days

Ten years ago I was shooting assignments with a medium format camera and a Polaroid back, had recently changed my company name from Wide Angle Productions to AlaskaPhotoGraphics, started an infant website, and made the seemingly tenuous decision at the time, to hire an employee. Wow, how times have changed since then.

Today, amongst many changes since then, marks the last day of my employee of 10 years. Andrew Johnson has developed into a skillful digital specialist and contributed his excellent technical and creative skills in co-shaping my present day business. He is moving on to broader horizons, in which, I expect him to do top notch work.

Andrew was largely responsible for scanning and moving my entire file cabinets of film images to an online platform, and developing our digital studio of computers and fine art printing. He also handled much of the office management in my many days of absence when in the field photographing. And assisted me on countless assignments.

Some of you who have either worked with Andrew, or had him do work for you, know of his competence . So with fond reflections of a decade, the future will be as full of changes as the past–going from good to better. Cheers Andrew

Through the process of converting from film to digital, there was a slow development of programs that handled the processing of RAW files. As software developed, the potential for extracting the maximum quality from a RAW file became more easily, and more quickly achieved. I remember dragging the temperature slider in the early version of RAW Canon’s processing program and then waiting for the little spinning icon to resolve a new look. Glad those days are gone.

Today, the process, although not simple, is amazing and relatively easy to use. What has developed along side the photographer’s time in the field is the corresponding understanding of what any given scene can look like with the post production process applied. This is important, since it allows the photographer to really push the boundaries, but still maintain good image quality.

This is true across the board, but certainly evident when photographing the aurora borealis. I’ve frequently received the question about how to process RAW files taken of the aurora, so I’d like to briefly address that here. As a precursor to that however, I’d recommend reading an article I wrote on photographing the northern lights with a digital camera. I moved it from my website to this blog for easier interaction with the readers. The first step is properly setting up your camera with a variety of settings, which I have addressed in that article. The second step is taking that RAW exposure into Lightroom for post production processing.

I shoot in auto white balance mode, not that it matters that much, since this is generally tweaked a little anyway, but it is a good starting point.

Below is an image I took last week, which is pretty good right out of the camera, although a bit warm overall, and kind of flat.

I usually begin from top to bottom in the LR development panel:

• Color Temp: in this case I cooled it slightly from 5450 to 5268
• Tint: This is one of the few times in nature photography that I use the Tint slider. Since green and magenta are two of the most common colors in the aurora displays, you can experiment by a combined use of tint/temperature to achieve the proper look. In this case, I increased tint from 74 to 80.
• Brightness: This affects the midtones and I decreased it from 50 to 20
• Contrast: This will give some punch into the image and I moved it from 25 to 80
• Clarity: A slight amount of 11 adds a little edge definition. Use it gently.
• Vibrance: I prefer this over saturation, almost always with aurora, and a little bit. In this case +9
• Lens Corrections: If you have the LR3, you can take advantage of the Lens Corrections and apply the proper profile correction for your lens which will deal with chromatic aberration and vignetting automatically. However, I find that the auto vignette often needs a little reduction, especially with aurora as the images appear to have over-brightened corners. In some cases, the dark corners can give more focus on the visual shape of the aurora. It just depends on the subject and content of the image. In this case, I reduced vignetting to 93.
• Detail and Noise Reduction: This is a big one, since aurora images are usually taken at high ISO. This frame, taken at 800 ISO, has some noise and grain after all of the above tweaks, especially in the corner areas. There are a number of noise reduction programs out there, but I prefer to keep my images in LR, and work from the digital file so I use LR’s built in Noise Reduction. This involves two settings, for the two respective types of noise: Luminance and Chromatic (or color). In this case I moved the default 50 color to 68 and the Luminance from 0 to 44. You can see the difference below. The application of these values will vary considerably from image to image, so don’t use this as a standard. If the image looks too mushy and smooth, you can try adding in a little grain which is found in the Effects tab.

No color or luminance noise reduction applied

After luminance and color noise reduction

These is more to say on the subject, but that is a little introduction to using LR to process a RAW northern lights photo.

Original capture in RAW before LR adjustments. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24mm f/1.4L II, 5 sec @ f/1.4, ISO 800.

After processing in LR as noted in the above listed adjustments

Need I say more?

Sculpted snowbanks on Barter Island, Alaska. Spot removal highlights. Sensor dust can't be easily dismissed in a serious workflow. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 500mm f/4L IS, 1/13 sec @ f/32

In the previous post I briefly discussed the general workspace and method I use to edit a folder of images in Lightroom. I began with 3,700 pictures from a shoot in Denali park, and after my first round of edits, followed by a second pass, I narrowed it down to 368 keepers. That’s about 10%, but this final number will vary greatly in relation to the type of subjects photographed. Wildlife and motion imagery often generates more frames, compared to landscape work. Additionally, what is chosen as a keeper will be based on the destination purpose, i.e., prints, stock, wedding, etc.

So what to do next with these 368 photos? Not to sound too much like a broken record, but one really needs to think this process through to the end product, so the necessary amount of work is done appropriately to the RAW file. What is not done can be as important as what is done, since a lot of time can be spent working on images.

If at all possible, I greatly avoid the need to generate a tiff. First of all, this is possible because of LR’s excellent development processes, and secondly, the algorithms and processing options for a RAW file are continually being updated. To employ them at a later time, one needs to then start over with the RAW file if a tiff has been made. All of that to say that you should do all you can in LR before making the final judgment on whether or not to make a tiff. And knowing LR can in the end save you time.

Since my website sales portal will be offering instant purchase, the pictures must be clean and well processed to meet professional standards for fine art prints and stock imagery. And, this needs to be done ahead of time now, and not just at the point of sale. So the following represents my successive workflow.

Set up your view options in both Grid and Loupe View

This probably belongs in the previous post, but if you have not done it yet, now is a good time: Click “Ctrl J” to open the view options dialog box. You have two environments in which to control what sort of badges and information is displayed on the image. I recommend making the compact cells and expanded cells to show different information on the thumbnails and you can toggle between these views by hitting the “J” key when in grid mode. The same can be done for the two “info” options in loupe view. You can toggle between them by hitting the “I” key. I like to set up my loupe info to include exposure/ISO/lens settings. But you can play around to see what best suits your inquiring mind.

Set view options by clicking "Ctrl J"

Spot Removal: “Q” shortcut key

Sorry to start with this annoying task. If you are not preparing files for print or press reproduction, skip this one!

This is done as a first pass on the entire folder. It is done first because it seems that using the spot removal tool in LR can be somewhat slowed down if there is an abundance of other brush and filter applications applied first. This is a hideously tedious job and unfortunately, the synchronization of spot removal from one image to another is seldom effective due to variations in the sky such as clouds, etc. Sometimes it works, but not often in my experience. Removing spots will encourage you to keep your sensor clean. If you own a Canon 5D Mark II, you might consider this dust shield option.

A time saving tip when using the spot removal tool: Size the brush properly by using the wheel on your mouse, (I almost always use the “heal” option) then click on the spot and drag the brush to a proper location in one motion. If you just click on the spot and release, LR will automatically select an adjacent area to sample from. But, I’ve found its not that smart in the choice process.

If you’re end goal is to make a web-presentable image only, I would not employ spot removal unless there are distracting and noticeable spots on a photo.

GLOBAL CHANGES

Step #1: Upgrade to the New LR3 Process

(This only needs to be done on older images imported with LR Version 2) You will see a little exclamation point in the bottom right when you go the development tab on a photo. Click that to upgrade, and select upgrade all images.

Step #2: Apply “Lens Corrections” to the entire folder.

(make sure your LR version is up to date with the latest lens profiles. While the lens profile list is not comprehensive, it is continually being updated)

This will take care of vignetting, chromatic aberration, and optical distortion. Select an image, go to develop mode, click the Enable Profile Corrections box. Then with that image selected in the grid mode, select the rest of the images and Synchronize settings. When the dialogue box comes up, click the check none button, and then only check the box for syncing the Lens Corrections. Then click Synchronize and you are done.

Check only the "Lens Corrections" box

You will learn if any of your lenses require any additional vignette control subsequent to the auto feature. If this is necessary, you can search for all images taken with that lens via the meta data search option in the “Library filter”, and select/apply that corrective setting to one image and then syncing it to all the others. You can activate this filter by going to View/Show Filter Bar, if it is not already visible. Then select Metadata, then in the Lens column, pick the proper lens (make sure all images are selected before filtering). For example, I find that the Canon 24-105 lens profile needs a slight decrease in the amount of vignetting applied by the profile, so I pull it down in the Vignetting slider below the Make/Model/Profile.

Step #3: Apply Noise reduction as necessary per ISO

If you know that there was a series of images shot at a high ISO that may be candidates for a greater degree of noise reduction, you can select these by using the Library filter in the same fashion as mentioned above. Click Metadata, then mouse over one of the columns and on the right side you will see a little list icon. Click on that and select add column. Once the column is added click on the word “None” and a drop down menu will appear allowing you to select a number of fields. Select ISO and you will then be able to select all images taken per specific ISO. Select those images and apply your “noise reduction” as necessary. I often apply a little more NR to photos that I shoot at 800 or 1000 ISO, and on images that will receive a large amount of shadow recovery (or fill). In the example below, I shot 51 images at 800 ISO.

Use the Library Filter to create a custom column for specific metadata

Following these global settings that can be batch applied, it is time to go into each image individually and begin the process of what I call grading, or processing but I do not call it editing. Editing in my terminology refers to the decision to keep or delete an image. There are a number of presets that can be purchased which include variations of customized settings in the develop module. Some people find these useful, but I have chosen to work through the various grading attributes in the develop module individually as it best suits my preference.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m sifting through 40,000 image files and getting them ready to be posted to a new website platform for stock photography sales. It is a daunting task, but progress continues. The process includes deleting old, outdated files, limiting redundancy, and applying a full-level processing endeavor to all files, including the great nemesis of dust removal.

Why am I doing this…well, there are a number of reasons. My previous workflow, although efficient, was not well-suited to an automated image purchase environment. Previously, I made a photo look good in a web environment, then at the point of sale, would give it a full treatment of fine-tune processing, dust stamping, etc. Click and buy requires that this be done ahead of time.

For those who are not interested in this workflow-geeky section, below is a pretty picture and you can bail after looking.

Morning light on Polychrome mountains, Denali National Park, Canon 1Ds Mark III, 100-400 f/5.6L IS, (275mm), 1/80 sec @ f/8, ISO 100

My LR workflow

Because some have asked me how I’m approaching this task, I decided to discuss briefly my workflow. One’s workflow is a personal system that evolves (with an emphasis on evolves!) based on the specific style of shooting and the desired end-use of the image. In my case, all images go to the web for purchase either as fine art prints or stock photography.

I’m going to jump past some of the basics of Light Room like the import process and meta date preset application and begin with how I  edit a folder of pictures following a shoot. Let me also note that there are many different ways to approach this subject, and I’m sharing what works for me. I’ll also skip over the many shortcut keys that can really streamline the process, they are available within LR under the main menu, or you can reference this shortcut index

I’m open to contributing thoughts and ideas so please comment if you have other suggestions that work for you.

Survey mode

I’ll begin with a folder of 3,700 RAW images that I took in Denali Park in autumn of 2010. That’s a lot of photos. I use two, 30 inch Dell monitors, and the value of large monitors becomes increasingly more apparent in the editing process. A friend of mine in an IT department used to say two things about computers: “The brain is a terrible thing to waste” (in reference to slow and inefficient computer hardware) and, “USER ERROR” which was his response to me whenever I called for his help.

In LR I select the folder in library grid mode, collapse the left and right panels, but show the toolbar (“T”) and the bottom filmstrip bar.

Lightroom panel in grid or library view, showing thumbnails.

When I come across a series of very similar photos and want to narrow it down to just one or two keeps, some means of comparing is essential since it is impossible to remember them when toggling through at full screen res. So, I select a group in the film strip or grid and select “Survey” as a view option in the toolbar. All images are automatically arranged to fit the screen. I know the example image below looks small, but each thumbnail is about 8 inches wide, large enough to get a reasonable view.

Survey mode arranges all of the images selected in the filmstrip to fit on the screen. On a 30" monitor, these images are 8 inches wide.

While this view is helpful for evaluation, it does not reveal a 100% view to judge sharpness and focus. So a really cool option in Lightroom, (one that I’ve recently started using is “live loupe view”. The image below shows my two monitors side by side, the left monitor shows LR in survey mode, and the second monitor on the right reveals the “live-loupe-view”, along with a browser window for multitasking. Two thumbs up for lots of screen real estate.

Two 30 inch Dell Monitors, LR main panel on the left, live, loupe view on the right, along with a web browser open.

Activating Live-loupe

To activate the Loupe mode with dual monitors go to Window/Secondary display and select Loupe – live. Another dialogue box appears which can be re-sized to your liking. I make mine big enough to give a good view of the critical parts of the image at 100%. The “live” part of loup-live means that the dialogue box will display at 100%, whatever image you mouse over in survey mode. You don’t need to click, click, click, in and out of 100% view mode. Just mouse over and check for sharpness. There are other options to utilize a second monitor in LR, and they are worth exploring on your own.

Color Tags

At this point, I select the one image I like the most and color it red (red is my color code for keeps). If I come across of group of images that make a panorama stitch or post production blend, I color them blue. I only delete the really obvious, out of focus junk. I do that by tagging those yellow (my color for delete).

A note about deleting

What about deleting? Well, for me a delete image can be decided without needing to zoom in. If I’m zooming in to decide whether to delete or not, I’m wasting time. Hard drives are very cheap, don’t waste time dealing with the 90% that you don’t want, spend your time on the 10% keepers. Remember, the mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Once I complete the first round of edits, I select all the non-colored (gray) images and move them into a sub-folder called “outtakes”, I then select all the yellow colored images and move them into a sub-folder called “delete” (but I don’t delete them until later).

Then I make a second pass through the keeper images to make any refinements before beginning the process of applying LR processes in the development tab, and I’ll discuss that approach in the next post, as well as what I do with the outtakes folder when I’m all done processing or grading the files.

I’m curious, does anyone else out there have more than 24 USB cables in their drawer? I hope not.

The time has come for a thorough overhaul of my computer parts drawer. It is both a disgusting and delightful process–to thin down to the essential and needed items–the disgusting part being how soon our world of electronics becomes either unuseful or obsolete, and thereby ends up in a landfill. In this rat’s nest of “stuff”, amongst a variety of miscellaneous items are:

• 24 USB cables with 6 extensions
• 13 firewire including two very long cables
• 9 standard power supply cables

I’ll be listing the lot on ebay for geeky parts collector/reseller with hopes that someone can put it to use.

My office continues to receive an overhaul as I move more towards a more minimalist center.