Project–a sequence of actions

Exercise 1: Your own workflow 1
Objective: Devise and then put into practice a workflow that suits you personally for a specific short assignment and make notes of your experience of this in your learning log.
Assignment:  Produce photographs of a National Trust property suitable for publication in a tourist brochure or information sheet. (had this been a professional assignment I would have contacted the National Trust. I checked their photography policy and as student assignment, I treated this as a “not for commercial use” exercise)

My own workflow for a time limited assignment:

Before leaving home:

• Check Camera and lenses are clean, charge battery and spare

• Check and format SD Cards - Use in rotation

• Check camera bag for equipment, lens tissue, blower brush, SD card cases
• Notebook, pencil, mobile phone

• Drive to Location

On arrival at location: (2 hours 1300 – 1500)

• Final check on camera settings, exposure mode, white balance, image quality (RAW +JPEG)
• Check light quality and direction in relation to the subject
• Walk around the location to find suitable viewpoints. Make a note of the ones you want to use
• Commit a few images to SD card to check for exposure (highlight and shadow clipping from the histogram) Adjust exposure compensation accordingly
• When the light is right, shoot the chosen locations.
• Allow time for the sun to move to highlight areas of the scene if necessary
• Record SD cards used and store in cases
• Return home  to edit images

Image Editing

• Transfer images to PC

• Perform technical edit

• Select satisfactory images from those remaining

• Make first selects

• Find several of the best images

• Review your best selection
• Process images (see personal workflow here)

• Choose two images for submission

I chose to use this exercise in combination with Exercise 4 (Editing). Click the link to see the images.
Conclusions:  I designed the workflow in light of my experience with the Art of Photography assignments that involved a specific project (i.e. Liphook Carnival) and I am pleased to say it worked very well. There is nothing I would change and the only problem I had was waiting around for people to move out of shot and/or for the clouds to move away from the sun. Luckily the two hours I allowed, had some contingency built in for this reason.