Wildlife Photography across the Water: Workflow

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Workflow

Firstly there is no right way of doing things, Everybody has their own way and what works for you may not work for others, I only shoot in RAW (Adobe RGB Colour space) and there are many different RAW converters like Adobes Photoshop and Lightroom, Paintshop Pro,Capture One,Canons DPP,Nikons NX2, Breezebrowser and Bibble to name but a few, I can only tell you what i use and how i use it at the moment but things are always subject to change, As i have mentioned on here before i use Breezebrowser purely to browse my images and delete the images that are not up to scratch, I also use it to rename the images and add some metadata-fast simple to use and cheap to buy,
Once i have my final selection of images in Breezebrowser i copy the RAW files into my WIP (work in progress) folder and also into their own folders say fox or waterfowl, I then open Photoshop CS4 and view the images in Bridge, after selecting an image and double clicking on it the image will open up in Camera Raw (ACR) where i will (if needed)
1,Check and Adjust Colour Temperature
2,Check and Adjust Exposure
3,Check and Adjust Recovery
4,Check and Adjust Fill Light
5,Check and Adjust Blacks
6, Add some Clarity,vibrance and Sat
Whilst in ACR i will level the image if needed, Maybe use the Grad filter if working on a landscape and may use the Adjustment brush to selectively lighten or darken parts of the image
The adjustment brush and grad tools are truly excellent and really easy to use-worth upgrading from CS2 or CS3 for,
So now we have finished in ACR we open the image into the main part of photoshop, Here i use adjustment layers and check and adjust
1,Levels (all RGB)
2,Curves
3,Saturation if needed
4,Selective Colour (Normally +2 black and neutrals)
Once these are done i go to Layer-Flatten image then check and remove any dust spots,At this point i may use some Highlight/Shadow and then Convert from a 16 bit to 8bit,The image is now finished and saved as a Tiff file-Full size, After this i then resize and save as a 1MG Tiff for agency submission and then Sharpen with USM (125/O.2/0) 3-4 times and save for the web (convert to Srgb box ticked) for web/website use. The full size Tiffs are saved in their perspective files as before and the images are then deleted from the WIP folder
This is basically my workflow at the moment, I do have Lightroom 2 and will be incorporating into the workflow soon, One thing i will say is that when processing try to be subtle in your approach,Dont over do the highlight/shadow and saturation, Try to make the image as natural as possible

Dave

3 comments:

Peter Edge15 April 2009 at 17:08
Very helpful Dave
When if at all do you run noise reduction?
i think you mean update from cs3 to cs4 for the adustment tool
Pete
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Gary6515 April 2009 at 22:41
Dave,

Interesting post, thanks for that.

Do you keep images in specific folders, relating to subject e.g. fox etc, or rely on metadata to find images ?
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Dave16 April 2009 at 13:45
Hi Pete
Yes i did mean its worth upgrading to if you have CS2 or CS3,If i run any noise reduction which is rare these days as the D3 is excellent in low light it would be at the end just before sharpening
Hi Gary65
I keep my images in specific folders but can search either in folder or with metadat-normally through folders though,As i say everybody has their won system and its just finding what works for you
Dave
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Bio's

David Courtenay, a self taught wildlife and nature photographer, has been capturing images for over 30 years. He has had a passion for wildlife since early childhood and remembers being glued to the television whenever Survival, Wildlife on One and other natural history documentaries were shown. In the 2006 he swapped his established career for the life of a wildlife photographer, such a move demands a measure of uncompromising passion and commitment.

David has travelled extensively throughout Europe as well as spending more than 7 months in India working with local guides and trackers in search of Bengal Tiger, Asian One horned Rhino and Asian Elephant. He has also photographed Wildlife in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, Africa, Canada and America. Working closely with Conservation companies he tries to raise funds to help Wildlife that has been put on the endangered list by poaching and habitation loss

Martin Dyer has had a passion for avian wildlife since childhood, particularly raptors. Photography was also another keen interest and it was with the specific availability and control of the whole process that digital offers that Martin was then able to combine the two in 2003. Based in the UK, Martin is a regular visitor to Scotland, specifically the Isle of Mull to watch the Eagles resident there. Other trips to Europe and around the UK are usually part of Martin’s agenda in a typical year.

However, as a firm believer on making the most of the local patch, Martin has spent a lot of time and hard work creating a wildlife garden which is reaping the rewards with many new species and varieties of wildlife. A keen member of a number of wildlife photographic groups, Martin is keen to expand his portfolio into other areas of wildlife, and has already established a wide portfolio of images of fungi.