At least 1,100 pictures behind...

skater

New member
Over the last few weeks, we've visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Smallwood State Park in Maryland; taken a 10-day road trip that contained Detroit, Mackinac, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago, and northwest Indiana; then last weekend we were at my wife's cousin's wedding in Philadelphia.

At Gettysburg, my wife decided we needed pictures of every monument/tablet/marker we saw. For the uninitiated, there are something like 850 monuments and tablets there (fortunately, we didn't see all of them!). She also started taking pictures of the individual company markers which aren't included in that 850 - for example, a (and please excuse me for screwing up the military terms) unit might have three or six companies, so there will be the main monument to the unit, then sometimes there will be three to six more markers for the individual companies. (The company markers are relatively rare, fortunately, other than those along the Union line.) We took over 300 pictures, most of which we kept. Entering the info for these pictures took a long time because I was looking up the location of every single monument/tablet and entering the coordinates in my database.

Then we visited this Smallwood state park. It's a very nice park. There was an Osprey nest with chicks that were just about ready to try flying. Every now and then they'd pop up and flap their wings. I also got some other birds, a dragonfly, some pictures of the water and marshes, and some sunset pictures. We kept ~100 of those.

Then the road trip. There are at least 1,000 pictures, and I haven't gone through them to whittle it down. We did so much - three baseball parks, two major museums, Mackinac Island and Mackinac Bridge, Lambeau Field, downtown Chicago, and Indiana Dunes State Park. Oh, and two flat tires and damage to our travel trailer from a golf cart. Quite a few of those pictures are pictures of baseball games that will be deleted (taking high frame rate pictures of the batter swinging at the pitch, and I just missed it, or the batter didn't swing, or the picture is before or after the swing). I'm not a baseball fan - I get bored, so I start taking pictures of the batters, trying to catch something interesting happening (it's hard, for so many reasons), the city skyline if possible, the ballpark itself, and other random things that catch my eye. In short, I don't yet have a good idea of how many pictures will be keepers.

Finally, the wedding last weekend. The reception was a nightmare for lighting, and I was very glad I wasn't responsible for taking pictures because I was stumped. It was very dark in the room, which isn't unusual, but the ceiling was clear glass (and at night), so the traditional bounce flash methods didn't work. The pros had two flashes - one on the camera facing away from the subject, and a remotely triggered flash that the assistant was aiming at the back of the subjects, toward the camera. I'm curious to see how their pictures came out with the remote flash. For my pictures, even auto mode wasn't working because it was setting the shutter speed at 1/60 (to match the flash) and people were dancing and moving, so they'd be blurry. I aimed my flash at the subjects and went to S mode, to set a faster shutter speed, with a relatively high ISO, figuring a grainy picture was better than no picture...I was really struggling. Nothing seemed to be working reliably. I haven't had the chance to glance through these, but I don't think I'll be holding any up as my best work. I think I got a few good ones, but...yeesh.

Last night I finished entering the info about the Gettysburg and Smallwood State Park pictures (subject, rating, category, etc.). Next step...doing an initial pass through the ~1,000 road trip pictures, then editing the keepers.

Am I the only one that gets into these situations where I'm so far behind that it feels like it'll take months to catch up? Part of my problem is that I take pictures of anything that stays still long enough (and some things that don't). Everything is interesting.
 

kevy73

Senior Member
Nice - it is hard when you get behind - I know - at the moment I am 6 weddings, 3 family portraits and 4 pre wedding shoots behind.... total of nearly 8000 images...... argh.

Why am I on here.... :facepalm:
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I won't hesitate to take a lot of shots but I'm also ruthless when it comes to "taking out the trash". I'd rather have 10 really killer shots than 100 mediocre ones.
....
 

Blacktop

Senior Member
Don't feel bad @skater. two weeks ago we went to NJ for my nephew's HS graduation and we stopped at a few places along the way. I just got done with the "along the way shots" I still have about 200 graduation pictures to go through.
Also I still have a bunch of Knoxville shots from before the vacation that I haven't touched yet.
 

skater

New member
Even if you only keep 10 pictures, you still have to go through the ~1,000 to find them. :)

I feel like I should take a week off work just to catch up on my pictures. :)
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Even if you only keep 10 pictures, you still have to go through the ~1,000 to find them. :)
Oh I can appreciate the size of the task... The fastest method I've found calls for using Adobe Bridge. I use it's Review Mode to go through my shots and each either 5 Stars, skip it or I hit the delete key to "Reject" it. Then I filter for "Rejected" items and delete them; that's Cut One and you can really plow through some shots fast... FAST... FAST doing this.

After Cut One I like to get away from the shots for a day and then come back and repeat the process with the shots that survived. After the second cut I'm usually down to a pretty manageable number. And only shots that are going to uploaded for viewing (like here on the forums on FB) get any post processing.

Some people I know process every shot they keep, which seems like a big waste of time to me.
...
 

Tom Grove

Senior Member
Am I the only one that gets into these situations where I'm so far behind that it feels like it'll take months to catch up? Part of my problem is that I take pictures of anything that stays still long enough (and some things that don't). Everything is interesting.

Nope!! I took my family to the San Diego Zoo on Saturday, then we went to the San Diego Safari Park on Sunday, and I got just over 1k photos between the 2 days... Sounds like we are all in the same boat.
 

skater

New member
Oh I can appreciate the size of the task... The fastest method I've found calls for using Adobe Bridge. I use it's Review Mode to go through my shots and each either 5 Stars, skip it or I hit the delete key to "Reject" it. Then I filter for "Rejected" items and delete them; that's Cut One and you can really plow through some shots fast... FAST... FAST doing this.

After Cut One I like to get away from the shots for a day and then come back and repeat the process with the shots that survived. After the second cut I'm usually down to a pretty manageable number. And only shots that are going to uploaded for viewing (like here on the forums on FB) get any post processing.

Some people I know process every shot they keep, which seems like a big waste of time to me.
...

My workflow used to involve flipping through them using Preview on my Macbook. Unfortunately recent versions of OS X have slowed that down so badly that it's no longer usable for that. Now, I import the pictures into Darktable on my new desktop machine (with an SSD and plenty of RAM) and flip through them there to decide what to delete.

I do at least minimal processing on most of the keepers. Most won't take more than a few seconds. I keep more than I probably would for myself, because my wife likes lots of pictures for her scrapbooks. (Our hobbies mesh well.)

I'm working on the first pass of our pictures of the Mackinac Bridge right now. I had no idea how fast fog could roll in. At 20:30:48 it's clear. At 20:41:08, we packed up, because the deck of the bridge at its highest point is COVERED WITH FOG. So...less than 11 minutes. I was kind of disappointed because I was really rocking the long exposure pictures and getting that smooth water and streaks of lights from cars on the bridge. I was in the zone. But I was also relieved because we were being eaten alive by the bugs, so having an excuse to retreat was good.

Turned out there was 1,210 pictures from the whole road trip. I'm down to 998, and I skipped quite a few from the first baseball game that will be deleted (not sure what the wife wants for her scrapbook). Unfortunately, I seem have a lot of trouble with my Tokina 11-16 focusing crisply at anything other than 11mm, which is my go-to lens for museums with large artifacts (cars, planes, trains, etc.). I've been following the threads on fine tuning the focus, so I'll have to test it.
 

skater

New member
So, I'm finally catching up and I thought I'd post some of the pics I mentioned above..

Mackinac Bridge before the fog got too bad...
box3roll95_489.jpg


And when we gave up...
box3roll95_492.jpg


Some stones on the shores of Lake Michigan...
box3roll95_710.jpg


A craftsman demonstration house near Portage, IN. Unfortunately it's a up a small hill, and it's a private residence, so I didn't want to enter their gate to get a better angle. But I love the sun reflecting off it...
box3roll95_712.jpg


White Sox pitcher Chris Sale threw something like 13 strikeouts, and his team was in the lead. Then the closer came in and blew it.
box3roll95_766.jpg
 

skater

New member
Finally, the wedding last weekend. The reception was a nightmare for lighting, and I was very glad I wasn't responsible for taking pictures because I was stumped. It was very dark in the room, which isn't unusual, but the ceiling was clear glass (and at night), so the traditional bounce flash methods didn't work. The pros had two flashes - one on the camera facing away from the subject, and a remotely triggered flash that the assistant was aiming at the back of the subjects, toward the camera. I'm curious to see how their pictures came out with the remote flash. For my pictures, even auto mode wasn't working because it was setting the shutter speed at 1/60 (to match the flash) and people were dancing and moving, so they'd be blurry. I aimed my flash at the subjects and went to S mode, to set a faster shutter speed, with a relatively high ISO, figuring a grainy picture was better than no picture...I was really struggling. Nothing seemed to be working reliably. I haven't had the chance to glance through these, but I don't think I'll be holding any up as my best work. I think I got a few good ones, but...yeesh.

Update on this part. I finally saw the pro's shots yesterday and they were great, as you'd expect. Clearly her camera does better in low light situations and she has a far better lens.

The rear flash wasn't doing what I thought. The rear flash was only backlighting (or sometimes sidelighting) people. The primary light came from the on-camera flash. The backlighting thing was sometimes very cool, but it also got distracting and even a bit overused. Still, the pictures were great, and I learned a few things about lighting. :)
 
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