Hey guys! This is Janine from Pangolin. Welcome back to my Lightroom course for
wildlife photographers. Today I want to show you a quick and easy workflow. How to handle
big amounts of photographs? Especially in wildlife photography, when it comes down to action, we tend
to burst shoot...and accumulate an enormous amount of data. I want to show you a smooth,
productive, and efficient workflow. Especially if you have a busy work life. Let's get started...
if you haven't yet, you can download this sequence of photographs from our home page,
and use them as an example to learn this quick workflow.
The workflow consists out of three steps. #1. Importing your images.
It is important to get them off your memory card. Especially if your memory card is full...
and get them to a safe space. After that, it doesn't really matter how long the images
sit on your external hard drive, in Lightroom. They wait for you until you have time to work with them.
If you want to know more about importing your images, please check out my other module.
It will guide you through the import process step by step. #2. The second step is to sort your images.
As you can see, I have all my images sorted chronologically in Lightroom - under one hard drive.
Obviously I don't have nearly 25,000 images on one single hard drive, however I tend to
format - and name my hard drives - all identically, so that they appear under one hierarchy in Lightroom.
Those folders that are greyed out, are those hard drives that I have currently not connected.
But, this is not enough detail for me to find specific images. So, now we need to go through them...
Maybe you have imported them today. You're excited to see your pictures.
Maybe you dumped them on your hard drive a month ago, and you finally find some time to view them.
So, we will not get around to look at each image individually, at some stage, to make a choice...and
during that time, I tend to sort them in a little bit more detail than just a chronological structure.
#3. The third step in my workflow is to edit...and I only edit at the end. Reason being is that we tend to get
very excited about a specific image. Something that talks to us, and we immediately want to work on it,
but we don't know yet if it is our best image, if we haven't gone through the entire stack of images.
So, it can be an enormous waste of time if we jump the gun, keep on editing in between,
and most of the time we'll never be able to finish an entire sequence of a productive day of shooting.
It could be a 1,500 or 2,000 images...and if you keep
on editing in between, you will never get done. So, stay disciplined. Stay strict with yourself.
and first go through your images once. If you're keen on learning more about editing check out my
other modules. This tutorial is more about step number 2. How can I sort through the enormous
amount of data that now lies in front of me. Let's get started. So, we're going to use this sequence
as an example, and as I have a look at it, I see all this is one animal, one situation.
This is the next one. So, it already gives me a good indication what's happening...
and before I start with anything, I tend to highlight the whole sequence by pressing the
first one in the row. Pressing shift...and pressing the last one in the row.
...and then giving it a nice keyword set all together. We would do that simply by writing,
and putting a comma in between the subject. It is a Pied Kingfisher.
It is busy fishing, or feeding. It is shot in the Chobe, and in Botswana...so simply by doing that
it took me a few seconds. I have got all these images already sorted. I know how to find them.
But what now? As we go through them, we should look at them in big. Matter of fact, we should
look at them in full view. You can access your full screen by pressing F...and if you press on it,
with a left click, you will zoom in with a factor that you had chosen in your navigator, previously.
So, now I will go through my images...one by one. Looking at them close up...and in my eyes
there are three types of images. 1.We have those that we're really excited about. They're
great! We want to edit them. We want to work on them...and they deserve a spot in our best of collection.
2. We have those images that just really did not work out. Maybe we didn't get the right
settings. Maybe the animal didn't behave as we wanted to. But, we don't really unnecessarily need
to keep hard drive space. Memory space has become cheaper, but not that cheap. We can actually delete them.
3. Then we have number three. Number three is a type of image that is quite difficult. It is those
images that we know they don't deserve a spot in the best of collection, but at the same time, we
want to keep them...because they're telling a great story. Maybe you captured some amazing interaction...
but something in the photograph didn't work out. Maybe it's just memories that you want to keep.
So, before we start going through our images, we are going to start creating a best of collection...
for the portfolio, that you're now busy viewing. That could be anything. Maybe you're visiting a
spot regularly. A hide. A pond close to your house, so you could have a best of collection for the
specific location, or it is an occasion such as a wedding. I am going to call this Lightroom
course. I also have a collection for social media. Whatever you would like to call it.
I don't want to include the first picture, because I haven't had a good look at it.
I don't know if it's good enough. But, I want to set it as my target collection...
because this is now the collection we are busy working in, and I am going to say...create.
Being my target collection, you will see it has a little + sign, and we can now either
drag and drop images that we find worthy, into here...but there is a much quicker way.
As we go through our images, we can allocate them to our best of collections simply by pressing
B. That will add them, or pressing B again, remove them from our target collection. So, now I don't
know is this picture better than any of the others? So, my first step is to have a brief scroll through
the entire sequence, to get a good idea of what I have caught. That way, I can decide what I like best...
and then I go through them, one by one...and I either B them, to put them in my best of collection...
or I reject them, because they're not good enough, and they eventually need to be deleted.
Or, I simply skip over them, because I decided they are not good enough for my best of collection.
But I don't want to delete them. They will remain in my folder structure. Maybe i go through it
another time again, and I find great memories. Alternatively, you can create a second collection
for a certain set of memories you want to keep. So you go through them, one by one. You can either
press the right hand arrow every single time, or alternatively, you can activate your CAPS LOCK.
Now, whenever you give a command...such as reject, or placing them into a collection, Lightroom will
automatically jump to the next image. In this way you can go through them one, by one, by one, by one.
Ideally, these little milky rejected images should make up the biggest proportion within your strip
down here...because in wildlife photography, we make a lot of mistakes. Things happen incredibly fast,
and quite frankly - within this sequence - I only need one or two photographs. Who am I going to show
14 Pied Kingfishers feeding on a fish. Easy as that. So now, it might take you a good hour to go through
a thousand images. First, keyword them as a block, and then go through them...one by one, by one.
Put them in the best of collection, or reject them. Now you have a best of collection, you can return to
any time, to start and edit. You know you've had a good look at all the other images,
and those are your best ones. You can now edit one, or you can edit two. Whatever your time
frame allows you. Maybe you don't have time to sit eight hours with your images. Maybe you have half
an hour every evening before you go to bed. So, make sure you take your portfolios in sections,
and work through a good batch...and only then, do you go to your best of folder for further editing.
I hope this gave you a good idea as to how you can handle large quantities of files. It goes quite fast...
as you see, you can keyword in batches, and if you go through them one by one, by one,
it is really, really quick. What do you do with the rejected images? You can afterwards go to photo...
In the drop down menu, you will find delete rejected photos, down here....
and you can delete them. It will ask you if you want to delete it just from Lightroom, or
if you want it permanently deleted, also from the storage device, where it sits on? I usually
delete it entirely, because storage is money, and I want to keep as much open space as possible.
We're getting closer to editing guys. If you want to know how to edit, or if you really
struggle making your mind up...on which image to choose, or which one to reject, and which one to keep?
Check out my other modules for that. There's modules on how to choose your photographs. Modules on basic editing.
I hope you enjoyed this Lightroom course. Please sign up on our homepage and you'll get more of this kind of content.
Bye, bye!