My Photography Workflow
Lightroom Classic is preferred over Lightroom CC
What most photographers (and clients) don’t realize is that photography is a two step process:
Taking photos
Post processing
Without a good workflow, the latter can be a big pain causing delays in delivery to the client. There is a third step and that is storage. That will be discussed in another post. Right now, we will focus on the first two steps which involves the client from taking the photos to delivery of processed photos.
Taking the photos is relatively the easier one of the two. Having a good post processing workflow is what will improve your output and ability to complete each gig quickly and efficiently. This will, in turn, allow you to take on more jobs while delivering photos to the client within the agreed upon time frame.
Speaking of which, make sure you set expectations prior to taking a job. This should be listed clearly on contracts or at the very least (if no contract is used) have this in writing within an email to cover your ass in case the client starts chasing.
The Star Rating System
The system that works for me is using the star rating system. Basically it is using the star ratings to mark which photos will be used, processed, and/or discarded. It goes something like this:
1 Star: Photo is decent and a keeper
2 Star: Photo will be delivered to client
3 Star: Photo is great for portfolio/social media
I stick with 3 stars as it works for me. You can use all 5 stars if you want further refinement. The client will receive all photos 2 stars or more (2 and 3 stars in my case).
Note: Throughout the post, Lightroom will refer to Lightroom Classic (unless otherwise specified).
First step is to use your preferred application for rating. I recently turned to Photo Mechanic as it is MUCH faster than Lightroom (c’mon Adobe!). Once I do my ratings, I import the 1 star and over photos to Lightroom. You can also just use Lightroom from the beginning. Import all photos into Lightroom and start rating them.
When importing into Lightroom, I rename the photos to correspond to the event and date taken. I also add them to a collection for easier organization. You can also keyword if you’d like.
Once the import is complete, you will start your culling. Make your first pass through all of the photos and start marking any decent photo with 1 star. This means that these photos are in some way usable to deliver to the client. Once you go through all of the photos take a break. Have your eyes adjust for a bit (up to an hour is good).
Now that you took a break, go through all the 1 star photos (filtering on 1 star or more) and start marking any good photos you would deliver to the client as 2 stars. You will be surprised how many photos will not make the 2 star rating once you go through a second time.
When you complete your 2 star rating, you are now ready to start processing your photos for delivery! When complete, you can export your photos. Any photos not rated can be removed and/or deleted. It is a waste of space keeping these and they didn’t make the first cut.
Photo Delivery to Client
For delivering the photos, I have been successful in using Google Photos. It is free, provides shared albums for anyone with the link, and is high enough resolution for any type of prints the client may want. I will also provide a ZIP file (hosted on Google Drive) to the client with the disclaimer that it will be unavailable after 30 days. The ZIP will contain full resolution photos in case they need to print larger poster size. Almost all of my clients never use the ZIP files. People today mainly use their phones so Google Photos is sufficient for them.
When I do an event that a client needs to pick their photos, I have employed using Adobe’s online sync service. On Lightroom online (http://lightroom.adobe.com), you can turn on Collaborative Proofing through Technology Previews. This will allow clients to pick their photos. Once they pick, you can then put the picked photos into a new album and sync back to Lightroom Classic. The nice thing about syncing through Lightroom Classic to Lightroom online is it does not use your quota. It only generates Smart Previews online which uses no space at all.
In Conclusion
That’s my workflow in a nutshell. Another post will discuss the third step: storage of photos. To summarize this post:
Import photos to Lightroom Classic or Photo Mechanic (then Lightroom Classic after rating)
Rate photos using 3 star system:
1 Star: Photo is decent and a keeper
2 Star: Photo will be delivered to client
3 Star: Photo is great for portfolio/social media
No Star Rating: Delete photos from disk to save storage space
Process your 2 and 3 star photos for delivery to client
Export and upload to your preferred photo sharing (I use Google Photos into a Shared Album)
Provide ZIP file with full resolution if required
That’s it! This is just one of many ways to have a workflow. It is what works for me and your needs or process may be different.