Digital Workflow for a Wildlife Photographer in the field

In this age of digital photography, every photographer must at some point decide on a workflow. This is extremely important for the wildlife photographer as they are usually a high volume shooters.

So after hours of mental agonising over the 'best' way to work you decide upon your workflow, you try it out after a local shoot and its all good.

Soon though its time for a big "away from home" trip.
Will you much loved workflow cope with life in the wild?

Our recent Masai Mara trip provided just that challenge.


You have thought out your trip (if not start here) and in the course of that you have purchased new "items".

For us the new items which affected worklow were a laptop and the recent inclusion of LightRoom into our Workflow.


Obviously the inclusion of LightRoom into the workflow brought many possible ways of doing things. Most of this had been put in place before the trip
but the challenges of 4 weeks on the road can change things.

The issues:

• Long hours in the field
• Dubious power supply
• limited storage

The solution:

Out in the vehicles:

• Download full CF cards to the NextO Ultra ND2525 (insert your choice of portable hard drive/ downloader).


WHY: It has a verify function, is very quick and its battery life is fantastic.

Once back in camp:

• Download any partially full CF cards to the Nexto.

WHY: The Nexto has a Firewire 400 connector so its slightly faster than a USB2 card reader.

• Using LightRoom, import files into Catalog, copy to date based folder on Nexto and rename files while importing.

WHY: Renaming files now saves considerable time later.The date based folder makes it easier to find things when you get home.

• Once the just completed shoot is imported, do first review with laptop. This review only looking at focus and basic composition.

WHY: If your trip is a decent length, hard drive space is at a premium, so get rid of the obvious rubbish.

• Copy remaining shots to the backup drive.

WHY: You can never have too much backup for your precious digital files!!

• Clean cameras and reformat the flashcards ready for the next session.
  

On average we had 2 - 3 hrs between morning game drive and the evening drive, so doing the above for 2 photographers and having lunch meant no afternoon nap.

The theory was to spend the gap time converting to DNG, so that by the 8-9 hr flight home I could keyword. That didn't happen.

At no time was any editing planned, no laptop lcd, even calibrated is really up to the task.

While you are there to maximise your opportunity to take great shots you also have to take the time to let it all soak in.

Time in the wild is something to be cherished in our ever ordered and controlled world.

So you want to minimise the time spent behind the computer.

The thing to remember with workflow is that there is no one right solution.
What works for one photographer may not work for another.
So the best thing to do is find out what others do and utilise the bits you like.

Hopefully our workflow will give some of you some ideas or at least make you think about your workflow BEFORE you get into the field.