Sunday, March 15, 2015

After you Take the Picture!

In my mind, much of the important (and time-consuming) part of photography comes after you've taken the picture.  What's the point of taking them if you don't use them for something?  Unfortunately I don't find it as much fun as being out there taking the pictures themselves, but I'm learning - slowly.

The first step is doing some basic editing.  After much struggle evaluating what to do, I bought the software 'Lightroom', and use it for editing pictures.  At a minimum I now cut the file size down considerably and add a copyright indication before posting pictures on this blog.  These pictures date from before I was doing that.

A year or two ago I would have said that photos are fine just the way they come out of the camera.  Now I'd say that almost any photo benefits from a little gentle editing.  I typically increase the contrast and clarity slightly, and sometimes sharpen or lighten a photo a little.  The rule I use personally is to try and make the photo look as close as I can to what I actually saw.  The one below had considerable cropping, but thankfully the focus was good enough to enable it.

Once you've edited photos, you're ready to use them.  There are lots of ways you can do that, but I use them primarily in 3 ways.  I use a lot here on the blog; the need to do that daily is what gets me out there with my camera more.  I also give illustrated talks, most recently a series on Scotland, with photos from our trips there.  And I've just started making up 'Blurb' books based on our trips.  I expect to do more of those.  I've only printed a few photos actually, but perhaps I'll do more.

At this stage I'm also now actually planning some of my photography.  Rather than simply taking my camera with me to see what I might capture (I still do that), I now plan specific expeditions with my camera, knowing that the season, the time of day, or the weather that day would be most suitable for the picture I want to get.  As I keep developing my photography I expect that I will increasingly plan my photography to get particular pictures.

Finally, I should say that in order to do all this effectively, you have to have your photos well organized.  This is where I'm an almost complete failure!  I have an idea how I'd like to organize photos and folders, but my computers defeat me, with different versions of Windows, and impossible back-up systems that sometimes don't work.  I'm just a little frustrated!  So that's the frontier of my learning.  Perhaps I'll sort it out a little better and tell you about it sometime.

In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed my brief sharing of how I'm progressing in learning photography.  Any hints on how to organize photos would be welcome!

Spring is arriving slowly here, though the landscape is still white.  Roads are now mostly bare, and smaller streams are starting to reappear.  No spring migrants yet, but there is a flock of Redpolls around, who will head further north to breed.


19 comments:

  1. These are beautiful photos. I will often do a bit of editing with my photos especially lighting. I have my photos saved in Picasa where I can keep them in folders under months or topics like trips or special occasions. They are all dated as well. I do some editing in Picasa and also in PicMonkey. I don't know if this is the answer to your question on organizing photos but hope it helps. Have a good week ahead.

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  2. Great photos - love the colors. When I edit/crop my photos I put them into folders with dates and then further I add key words to the title of the photo - example: bird eagle Mt Baker Pole Rd - giving me several prompts for looking up the photo later - I can search eagle or bird or Baker or Pole Rd (the location where I saw the eagle) - the more I put into the description the easier it is to later find the image if I want to do a series on any of those topics or a collage. One thing to remember is that Picasa does NOT save your photos - it only is a listing of the photos in your computer so it is a good idea to have a backup - I back up to a 1T external hard drive that lives in the safe deposit box at the bank (once every two months) plus I use on online backup called Backblaze - it saves photos and you can access it from any computer.

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  3. Your photos are quite lovely. Those birds are awesome!

    For me, each 'outing' has its own folder and, in case of multiple visits, they are listed by date for that year.

    I have a copy of all photos (the current year) on my computer. Like JoAnn, I have a copy of all the photos I have ever taken on an external drive (but not at the bank--it's just in case my computer crashes). I also upload them all to cyberspace (through Picasa) with each year having its own gmail address.

    As for editing,I don't do a lot of editing for my photoblog. I have found Photoscape quite satisfactory because it has more tools than Picasa and is very simple to use. It's free at photoscape.org

    Hope this helps. Happy snapping!

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  4. Yes, I have thoroughly enjoyed you sharing your progression in photography. These have been very interesting posts, and I have learnt from them.
    I organise my photos in folders of months and then dates. All photos are tagged with key words so easy to find. I back them up with 2 copies on external hard drives.

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  5. Your post talks of a similar learning curve that I have been dealing with when it comes to the computer used in tandem with the camera. I don't know what I would be doing today if it wasn't for my son's expert help on both of these things. Young folks are so articulate about cameras and computers.I have learned many ways to handle these techno products but I still have a long way to go. It is obvious that you know how to bring the best out in your photos. Lightroom is the app I use too. I have a nice file system for my photos but I am sorry I can't begin to tell you how to set it up (again my son helped me set this) . If I find out what he used to set it up I will let you know. I loved your photos today. -- barbara

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  6. Thanks for sharing your photos and knowledge!

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  7. Thank you for sharing this information. I am considering getting 'Lightroom'. Organizing is also my problem. Some good suggestions were made above.

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  8. I gasped at that last picture. The perspective is amazing. I almost always crop a little to make the picture a bit better. Fortunately for me as an Apple fan, I download my pictures from my camera into "Events" that help me keep them organized. Every once in awhile I will remove an Event to a hard disk to keep my laptop from filling up too much. :-)

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  9. FG, the picture of the birds in the nest is fabulous, and they are looking right at us!

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  10. Beautiful photos - the last of which is just superb! I use an iMac, and iPhoto for my organizing of all my photos; I use Adobe Photoshop Elements for all my processing; I copy everything instantly to an external drive after processing them. I also move the originals to that same hard drive. I create individual folders for each year; in that folder I place more individual folders: Scenic, Birds, Pets/Livestock, Wildlife, etc. I've found it works really well for me. So far, I have 12 years worth of photos on two Western Digital external Hard Drives. The second is an exact replica of the first one (in case one fails). I keep the present year, and one prior year folder on my actual computer at a time.This method works well for me.

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  11. I organize all my photos by date and store them on a external hard drive (and have another for backup). I've been using Lightroom for a year now, and it does help with organization - you can tag photos with keywords. However, I usually remember dates, so I can find a specific shot.

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  12. I like what you've done with them. The birds are quite curious.

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  13. Wow, I would have no trouble finding a place for all of those photos if they were mine! Lovely, each one.

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  14. I use lightroom too but not as much as I should! I have two HP Simple Saves for backups and I used to back up to disc but I am at least a year behind on that project. I am learning to delete photos and keeping only the best! I keep my photos in a Monthly folder and then other folders inside are marked with the date and subject matter...yard, fields Chance ...it works for me.

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  15. Wow all are very pretty.
    I enjoy just being out there taking the pictures. I hardly ever edit mine and once I look at them I decide which ones to put on my blog that day and then delete the rest. I save very few pictures. I know I'm strange. : )

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  16. when i did not see snow, i thought i was in the wrong place!! i don't and have never edited my pictures. i guess everyone can tell that!! i always enjoy what i see when i load my pictures, i never felt the need to alter or perfect them. i am a perfectionist in other areas....but it would be all consuming if i tried to edit my images. just my very humble opinion, these are all beautiful!!!!

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  17. Lovely images! I use Adobe Bridge and Photoshop. I make 2 folders for each month, downloading current one to 4March2015 and after editing the chosen few, saving to 2015 March. When I first insert the SD Card, I open in Bridge and use the rename tool to save to the first folder as follows: 2 fields, first being 4 digits which I copy from the last 4 digits in the camera-assigned number, and the second being an identifying name such as a place.
    I usually brighten the pics slightly, resize, and add meta text, and then paste in a Copyright statement before saving for web. When desired I make other refinements too, especially cropping.

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  18. Lovely pics, one and all but that last one is amazing. I only use my blog as a place for showcasing my photos. To date, I've never even printed one of my images. As for organizing, since it's blog only, I sort by Year, Month, Blog post title. Any I don't use on the blog but want to keep gets placed in the Misc. file - one per month. The rest (the vast majority) get the trash can!

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  19. I do have an organizational method that works pretty well. That said, I'm always behind on getting it done. Love the frost on the leaves.

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