Behind the Scenes: My Complete Workflow for Downloading, Processing, and Storing my Digital Photos

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Wild Photographer.
I'm your host, court Whalen,and I've got a doozy of an
episode today, but doozy in agood way.
This is an episode that's beenrequested time and time again,
so this is delivered withpopular demand.
The episode on my entireworkflow of taking photos,
storing them in memory cards,putting them on the computer,

(00:21):
organizing and some basicediting.
So, in other words, what wecall it in the industry is DIT.
Don't worry about thebackground and the meaning of
all that, but essentially it'sthe start and end of everything
with digital informationtechnology.
Well, okay, cat's out of thebag.
Dit stands for digitalinformation technician on normal

(00:42):
film sets and photo shoots, butit's essentially the role of
managing the product, managingthe digital information.
That is really the be all end.
All the creativity, the vision,the location.
That's all super duperimportant, but getting those
files safely stored back to yourhome computer, storing them

(01:04):
permanently, being able toaccess them when and how needed
and also being able to edit themwith ease and proficiency is
what we're talking about today.
So it's actually a very, verylengthy topic.
What I'm going to be deliveringtoday is my personal workflow,
so on one side of the coin.
I'm saying this.
So you realize it's my personal, subjective view on all this.

(01:27):
It's not the be all end all,it's not the answer that
everyone seeks or needs or willcome to on their own.
But I also must say it's from20 years of doing this in the
digital age and I've honed andrefined to continue to hone and
refine my practice and I thinkI've got a pretty darn good
setup, at very least for me, butI think that translates to a

(01:48):
lot of other folks out there.
So, without further ado, behindthe scenes, my complete
workflow for downloading,processing and storing my
digital photos.
Before I begin, like to give aquick shout out to
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(02:09):
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(02:31):
off promo code, which is prettydarn sweet.
Let's get into it, starting atthe beginning, taking the shots.
What do I do to take my shots?
Well, I have a camera has dualmemory card slots and I have one
compact flash and I have one SDmemory card.
This is how I record all myimages, but I actually have them
set to two different things.

(02:52):
The SD card goes to photos andthe compact flash goes to is
actually a CF Express, compactflash express.
That is only video.
The reason I have that is thatway, when I know I need some
video, I can take my video cardout and I'll just sort through
all the photos.
And then, vice versa, when Ineed just my photos to process

(03:12):
after a photo shoot, I'm notsorting through, needing to
download literally hundreds ofgigabytes of video to then sort
through just for a couple photos.
I find it works really reallywell.
When selecting memory cards, ahuge thing for me is to get the
fastest and really darn goodmemory cards.
There are so many on the markettoday.
It's very easy to be tempted onAmazon or B&H or anything else

(03:36):
out there to go for the $19.99memory card.
Memory is cheap in the grandscheme of things.
Upgrade, get a good memory card, and what that really means is
not just the size of the memorycard.
The size is very importantbecause that allows you to
essentially worry less betweenshoots or within a single shoot
that you're going to use allyour memory.
You can always delete photos,but it's hard to add memory when

(03:58):
you run out and you're in themiddle of some awesome wildlife
spectacle or a beautiful sunrise.
That's the most inopportunetime to run out of memory.
But it happens each and everytime, shouldn't say each and
every time.
It happens often, too often forme in the past.
So I've fixed that by gettingbig 256 gigabyte, 512 gigabyte.
I'm sure my next memory card'sgonna be over a terabyte once I

(04:20):
start looking at new cameras andall that.
So get big memory.
But more importantly is thespeed of your memory card, and
there's a lot of different waysyou can tell speed.
Usually it's a number in an MBslash S megabytes per second.
But it's a little morecomplicated than just getting a
fast number, because sometimesthat's the read speed, sometimes

(04:40):
it's the write speed.
Write meaning like writing ontothe memory card.
What you really want to lookfor and fortunately memory cards
have simplified it is now theyuse a U terminology U1, 2, or 3,
and that basically tells youhow fast you can read and write
to your memory card.
Essentially, how many photos canyou take in a row?

(05:01):
Or video, how big a video, howmany frames per second can you
take?
So I always get U3.
Big a video, how many framesper second can you take?
So I always get U3.
That's the fastest they have,at least at the time recording
this podcast.
They could have somethingfaster in the coming years or
coming months even, but U3 isgoing to really set you up for
just about any photography thatyou need, unless you have one of

(05:21):
these newer cameras like thecanon r1 that shoots like 30 or
40 60 megapixel shots per second.
Like you might need somethingdifferent there, but for most of
us that are shooting between 10, maybe even 15 shots a second,
I'll be honest, that's even onthe very, very fast end of the
spectrum.
U3 is fine.
I use u3 for 100 120 frames persecond 4K video.

(05:48):
So it's like slow-mo 4K videoand it works just fine.
So U3, it's going to cost youmore than the others, but it's
not that much money in the grandscheme of things.
It's going to future-proof,you're going to have it, it's
going to last longer.
It's definitely the way to go,so 100% recommend that.
I do want to talk about thecontrast between multiple

(06:09):
smaller memory cards or one bigmemory card, because I do know a
lot of photographers that feelstrongly that it's better to
have multiple small cards incase one of them fails, and
that's a really darn good point,even though I prefer what I
view as the easier route of justhaving one or two big cards.
I can understand where they'recoming from, because sometimes

(06:29):
you do have memory card failures.
I've, fortunately, never hadone in the field, and I'm,
honestly, in the field a lot,like you know, up to 100 days a
year so it's enough that I feellike I've really tested it Again
why you get good, expensivememory cards, but it's worth
considering, instead of gettingone 512, maybe getting four 128

(06:50):
gigabyte cards if you need thatredundancy.
Again, though, what I found is,with the smaller memory cards,
I'm changing them more often.
I'm running out.
I'm missing that sunrise, I'mmissing that wildlife spectacle.
It's happened to me enoughtimes.
I no longer do that, so justkeep that in mind.
The other thing that I am reallythinking about is to not be

(07:11):
overly gratuitous in taking myphotos.
There was a time in my lifewhen I really just tried to
shoot, shoot, shoot and worryabout culling later and just
going, going, going and justtaking as many photos as
possible.
I am much more judicious now inthat I will take rapid burst
photos, but it's only if it'ssome sort of really awesome

(07:33):
wildlife behavior.
I am no longer taking five, sixphotos of the same landscape
shot.
I'm really, really deliberate,you know.
I'm not just going to walk upon a scene and take the first
shot with whatever camerasettings are dialed in.
I'm going to pause for a moment, look at the scene, even if it
is a sun rising or a sun setting.
I am going to be very, veryjudicious, mainly because I

(07:56):
don't have the time, the energy,the bandwidth to go through
tens of thousands of photosafter a trip anymore, and I
don't think you should either,even if you have the time or the
bandwidth.
It's something to be very, verycognizant of.
Take fewer photos.
It helps you appreciate whatyou have.
It helps you spend more timeediting those photos versus the

(08:16):
culling.
We only have so much bandwidth.
We can only give so much of ourtime to some of these things.
So spending more time on whatcounts, which is the editing so
much of our time to some ofthese things.
So spending more time on whatcounts, which is the editing,
than the culling highlyrecommend it.
So if I'm in front of an amazinglandscape photo, I might take
two or three shots, but I'mdefinitely not taking, you know,
10, 15, 20, with this idea inmind that the more the merrier.

(08:38):
Oh, I should take it at F5, f11, f22.
I should take it at 1 over 40thof a second.
I should take it at ISO 2000,1000.
I'm going to take what I thinkis the best and then one or two
variations tops.
Then the other thing, when we'retalking about the field right
now, when I'm actually takingthe photos, is, once I come back
from the day, I always want tomake sure I have at least two

(09:01):
copies of every single photoI've taken.
So what that means is veryoften is I have a photo in my
camera, on the memory card, andthen I've downloaded that once
to my computer's hard drive.
Okay, so what that means is,without deleting memory card, I
still have the photos on thecard safe and sound, and then I
have a backup copy on mycomputer, safe and sound.

(09:23):
Now, frankly, the copy of mycomputer really turns into the
primary copy, because that'swhat I'm gonna start editing as
I go along, but nevertheless twocopies.
So what happens when you needto download your memory card and
delete it?
Well, that's when an externalhard drive comes in handy.
So I still like having a copyon my computer itself because I
find I could edit and sort anddeal with them much faster.

(09:51):
The speeds, the transfer speeds,are not an issue.
If I were to put everything ontwo different external hard
drives, I'd be editing andmoving and viewing via that
cable to the external drive,which, even if it's a really
fast one, it's going to slow itdown a little bit.
So again, my choice option isto have one copy in the computer
and then one external hard.
Slow it down a little bit.
So again, my choice option isto have one copy in the computer
and then one external harddrive, usually a solid state
drive that does allow for veryfast transfer.

(10:11):
It would allow me to editmostly just fine if I really
needed to.
But more than anything, I justneed one external hard drive
that is some sort of safetymechanism in case my computer
goes to put or in case my harddrive goes kaput, and then, yes,
what I do is, if I run out ofmemory or if I feel like I'm
going to need a lot more memoryin the coming days, I will

(10:32):
delete that memory card.
It's always a little bitbittersweet because it is
essentially erasing thesecreations, this art that I've
made.
But knowing that I haveredundant backups is really,
really a key thing.
And then for me, what I do is Ido a low level format of my
card.
I've heard, and I do believe,that it's the safest way to
reset a memory card.

(10:53):
Sometimes if you do a highlevel format, it can scarify the
card a little bit like.
I don't really even know whatthat means.
I know what scarify means thatmeans like scarring the card but
I don't know exactly how themechanism works to erase data.
But I'm told again, low levelformat, which most cameras allow
you to have, is the safest way,even safer than just going

(11:16):
through one by one and deletingor going to a setting that says
erase all.
Formatting tends to be the bestway to go for long term health
of your memory card.
And going back to what I saidbefore, getting really good
memory cards is an investment.
So you want to protect thosethings and you definitely don't
want to have a risk of thosefailing in the field.
So I go through a couple extralittle cognizant steps to make

(11:38):
sure that that happens.
Just fine, okay, fantastic.
So that's pretty much all thestuff going on in the field.
You can see I have, I have noteshere, I am looking at this, uh,
we're moving on to uh, eitherin the field or at home, but
usually what I'm doing is, onceI'm organizing my photos, I'm
looking at this as the nextstage of evolution in my, my DIT

(11:59):
process.
So really what I do again thisis me personally, but I found it
really good is I set up afolder on my computer or in
whatever drive I'm actuallyusing as my working copy.
Remember, I have a redundantcopy, which is great, but I'm
not working off of that.
I'm making all my changes, myedits, my renaming, that sort of
stuff to my primary copy andwill revert to the backup copy

(12:23):
if shit hits the fan, not as aprimary thing, not as like.
I'm not going to be swappingbetween these two copies.
So there will be things that Ido to my primary copy that I may
not do to my backup, simplybecause I don't plan on using
the backup.
We'll talk about permanentredundancy and backups later.
This is kind of transitioninginto that from the field into

(12:43):
home, into permanent storagething.
So what I do is, for every trip,I set up a folder with the trip
name and year.
Might be Greenland 2024, borneo2019, madagascar 2022, whatever
it might be.
I do enough trips that I needto be that specific, but I don't
do so many that I need to startdoing Borneo August 2022,

(13:08):
borneo September 2022.
There are some people thatmight need to do that and that I
have had to do that in the past.
And that's really all I do tripname, month and year, but
usually nine times out of 10,just trip name and year and then
inside that folder I set up araw folder and that's where all
my raws go.
There are people that reallylike to organize by date of the

(13:29):
trip throughout the trip.
I found that to be very, verycumbersome I it doesn't work
very well for me because I'messentially having to go through
another set of folders to startperusing and looking and going
through my culling, you know,whittling them down to the
usable ones that I really want.
So as a result, I'm really verycognizant to keep it simple

(13:51):
when I wanna look at my photosand start banging through the
culling and the process and theediting.
So, again, just one folder withraw, and then again I have that
on my laptop itself.
I will then, once they're allprocessed and I've just skipped
through a litany of steps that Iwill be walking you through but
what I want to get the bigpicture of is, this trip folder

(14:14):
has raw, and then this can havemy JPEG folder Once I processed
it.
Um, it might also have myvideos, which will basically
just be clips, and thensometimes it'll have a teaser
reel or a teaser sheet which Iactually make in bridge or in
Photoshop, where I selectbasically the 20 best photos
that I often send to mymarketing team or send to

(14:35):
editors or send to magazines orwhomever is looking for this
work.
That's the teaser sheet, whereI just kind of have these little
thumbnails that are about onesquare inch more or less that
someone within one attachment toone email can look at a good
representation of your entiretrip or your entire photo shoot.
We'll talk about more about howto make that in a little bit,

(14:55):
but essentially that's what'sgoing to ultimately go in my
folder, but we're sort offocusing on raw for the moment.
So how am I putting these fileson my computer?
Well, I use a Mac and there's adefault application called
image capture and I think it'spretty darn good.
It's.
There's very few bells andwhistles to it, but it allows
you to download.
It allows you to downloadeasily, it has a progress bar,

(15:18):
it allows you to put it whereyou want on your computer or on
an external drive, and that'skind of all you need Now.
I do use Adobe Bridge for a lotof my work and we'll get to
that next in the editing sectionas to why I like Adobe Bridge
as a file viewer.
But basically, you can use AdobeBridge as a file importer as

(15:39):
well.
You can use a lot of otherapplications as an importer.
I'm pretty sure Lightroom andPhotoshop have their own
versions too, and I think itcomes in handy if you are
starting to really do a lot ofcataloging of your image or of
your images before you put themon the computer, or if you have
a lot of details you want to addto the images like metadata.
Let's say you are the kind ofphotographer that's shooting

(16:01):
almost every day as your careerand you have one day that you're
shooting a wedding, this thisnext day, you're shooting an
engagement shoot next day you'redoing this and you might prefer
your organization instead ofbeing in separate folders, to
have keywords or metadata, andsome of these more fancy import
applications like Adobe Bridgewill allow you to do that.
The other great thing aboutAdobe Bridge is it's completely

(16:23):
free.
It is basically just a fileviewer.
It's like the Finder window onyour Mac or the Explorer window
on Windows.
It's free with any sort ofsubscription to Adobe products,
whether it's Lightroom,photoshop you know you name it
InDesign.
They have like 25 differentprograms now.
So ultimately you're going towant to get them on your

(16:44):
computer with some sort ofimport ability and again putting
them in that folder, in the rawfolder you created within the
trip name.
I do personally use a memorycard reader.
Now nine out of 10 computersnowadays have their own memory
card slot and sometimes I usethat.
I haven't found a huge speeddifference, but when I am using

(17:04):
any sort of funky camera cardlike my compact flash express, I
have to use memory card readerand I find that the pro grade
that's the brand pro gradememory card reader is lightning
fast.
It works super well, it's veryeasy to plug into your computer
and while they seem a little bitsupport for us these days, I
found that the pro grade memorycard reader does actually go a

(17:27):
little bit faster and there'ssomething about it that I really
like using, I think, becauseI'm able to put in multiple
cards.
That way I can just batch doeverything all at once.
It's really really nice.
Okay, so that is the gist ofgetting your images from your
camera to your computer.
Like I said, I might do thismultiple times throughout a
photo shoot or especiallythroughout a multi-day trip.

(17:49):
But let's move on now to whathappens.
What do I do once I'm startingto look at these photos?
Basically, what I'm doing atthis point is starting to review
them.
You know, for instance, myrecent 10 or 11 day Greenland
trip.
It was so packed full ofamazing photo opportunities that
it was really hard to rememberwhat happened the days before or

(18:11):
even a week before.
It seemed like a lifetimebefore.
So going through and reviewingis a really, really key thing,
because ultimately, you do have,you will have.
You should have some number inmind of how many photos you want
at the end of your trip.
If you take 10,000 photos.
It'd be very, very hard to callthem down to 40 or 50.
If you take 300 photos, you'reprobably not going to want to

(18:36):
keep 200 of them.
Most likely there will beredundancies, and some of them
are great, some of them are good, some of them are just not good
at all.
So you're going to start offwith some sort of idea in mind,
but be flexible.
Generally, I'm taking you know,I'm trying to capture or I'm
trying to save, retain about twoto 300 photos per trip because
I think that gives me a nicebreadth, a nice variety of

(18:57):
things that I'm shooting.
But, that being said, I don'thold myself super hard to it.
But nevertheless, two to 300photos is kind of my sweet spot.
But the way I get there is themost important part of this.
So Adobe Bridge once again, ifyou have Photoshop or Lightroom
or any of these things, adobeBridge will allow you a free
download and allow you to use itjust like any sort of file

(19:19):
viewing applications.
It allows you to quickly lookat the photo settings, like your
aperture and your shutter speed.
Sometimes I truly look at thoseto analyze the difference
between two shots.
If I say, gosh, these two shotsare the same.
Why would I choose one or theother?
I'm not going to keep bothbecause they seem like the same
shot and I noticed that.
Well, one is on F 11.
And one is on F four and it's alandscape shot.

(19:41):
I'm going to know I'd ratherhave the big depth of field in
case I want to blow it up to abigger size.
Right now I'm looking at it onmy small laptop, so I have to
use some of the data to makethose decisions.
But the great thing about bridge, once again, is it allows you
right off the bat.
The first thing I do is arating system and although I use
a combination of bridge andPhotoshop and the intermediate

(20:02):
program is called Adobe cameraraw that's actually my editor it
is identical to Lightroom injust about all ways.
The only thing where it's notidentical is it doesn't have
that file management and thatfile storing and that file
organization system.
Bridge allows you to basicallymake your own organization,
hence why I talk about havingtrip name and date raw and then

(20:26):
files and then, like I said,jpeg and other things in that
master folder.
Lightroom, I've been told inrecent years, has gone away or
at least given you the abilityto no longer do that mandatory
file management system where youhave to use vaults and all your
edits are reference files toyou know wherever your base file
is and you can't really copyand paste that original file

(20:48):
over to another hard drive andretain the edits without then
also copying your, your albumand your, your vault with it.
Anyway it it got me very turnedoff of Lightroom when I first
started trying to use it.
You know now 15 years ago, andI talked to another pro
photographer and they were usingAdobe Camera Raw and that's
what I use still to this daybecause it just works.

(21:09):
That's a really commonalitywhen I'm looking at technology.
I like it if it just works.
So anyway, bridge plus AdobeCamera Raw probably looks a lot
like what you might be seeing inLightroom.
And I'll stop rambling at thispoint and I'll get to my point
that I'm trying to make, whichis I rate my photos before I
even touch a single editingpanel.

(21:31):
I don't process, I don't adjustthe photos whatsoever until I
rate them, and this is basicallywhat I referred to before as
culling the photos down.
So let's say I'm using thistrip example from Greenland.
I think I had four or 5,000photos.
I'm going to stick to my two to300 photo ideal.
If it's 400, that's fine.

(21:51):
I'm definitely not going towhittle it down to 50.
It's always harder to whittleit down smaller than to keep
more.
So the the discernment, the,the due diligence that you're
doing is really just trying toget it down to a manageable
number.
So, anyway, once I have my okay, so once I have my photos in

(22:12):
one file again, I can see themall in the panel of Adobe Bridge
.
I go through and I rate them,and this is where the star
methodology really, really helps.
I don't know where I would bewithout being able to mark these
photos somewhere between zerostars and five stars.
Of course, you know the starsare yours to do whatever you
like to do with.
You don't have to do a specificthing.

(22:34):
But I'm going to tell you how Iuse mine and I think it works
really darn well.
So the first thing I do is I gothrough every single photo of
the trip and I give those photosthat turned out in some way,
meaning they're not blurry,they're not just a terrible,
terrible angled composition.
I didn't accidentallyphotograph my pocket or the
floor of a Zodiac.

(22:55):
If it turned out, I'm going togive it one star.
Now what that means is thatzero stars are basically I'm
fast forwarding here, but zerostars are basically going to be
my throwaways.
I'm not going to do anythingwith those zero stars, but I do
keep one stars upward.
So you and your own workflowmight want to kind of toggle

(23:17):
that a little bit to know.
You know, do you truly want tokeep all your one stars or do
you want to assign them zerostars and then delete them later
?
So once I go through everythingwith one star, that allows me
to see all my photos from theentire trip.
This is really really valuable,because now I'm getting
relativity from photo to photo.
You know, I may have seen myfirst iceberg on day one and I

(23:38):
may have thought to myself oh mygosh, this is the coolest thing
in the world.
I'm gonna photograph the heckout of this iceberg.
And then, lo and behold, I seeicebergs on day two, three, four
, five, six, seven, eight, nineand so on.
This is a very common thingwith expedition photography.
And then one of those days, thelighting is going to be much

(24:00):
better than the others, or atleast a little bit better, and
you're going to get your besticeberg photos in those those
next days.
So I think it's reallyimportant to go through your
photos entirely to understand.
How do your early photoscompare to your late photos in a
trip.
So, again, one star for anythingthat turned out.
That means even when I'm onburst mode and shooting 10
photos of wildebeest emergingfrom a river in Kenya.
I'm keeping all 10 of thosebecause I'm not at the point

(24:22):
where I'm trying to figure outif I should get rid of any of
those or if I should.
If there's one that is betterthan the others, that comes down
with the next stars.
So then, for two stars.
I'm now going through.
I'm trying to look at my onestar batch as what do I actually
want to edit, like?
What are the things that makethis photo special?

(24:44):
What makes this photo differentthan the others?
If I have 10 photos ofwildebeest, what are the couple
that are like really jumping outat me?
And one trick and technique Ido is, honestly, to not think
too much about it.
I go through these pretty fast.
I don't sit and analyze forminutes or hours.
I sometimes come back to themlater, but I don't really spend

(25:04):
a lot of time If something popsout to me and stands out as a
really, really good photo thatgets kept.
You know, err on the side oftoo many photos at this point
because we still have our starthree, star four, potentially
even star five to be able toattribute to these photos, to
help us pare them down to amanageable workload to
ultimately edit or send toeditors, send to colleagues,

(25:27):
send to friends and family, postonline, post on social media,
etc.
Etc.
So two stars is basicallyanything that I'm thinking.
Oh yeah, I would like to edithere Once I have my two star
batch.
I probably have now furtherculled my grouping of an
original 5,000 photos.
I probably nixed 500 to 1,000of those, going from zero to

(25:48):
star one and then from star oneto star two, I probably removed
another 1,000 to 1,500.
Generally, by star two I'm atlike half or less than half the
original batch, let's just say2500, for lack of a better way
to put it.
So now, because I was erring inthe side of keeping too many
photos and not enough orditching a photo that might be

(26:09):
really important, I'm now goingthrough all my star twos and I'm
looking at them as what do Iactually really want to spend
the time editing?
What am I excited to edit?
And this further breaks thosestar twos.
So when I see a scene, I'm gonnause the wildebeest example
again of wildebeest emergingfrom this the the mara river in

(26:29):
kenya, and I'm burst shootingand I have 10, 20 photos of a
sequence and I keep, you know,maybe two, three, four, five,
six, something like that CauseI'm like, ooh, these are all the
best, like these are the topsix out of the out of 20.
Um, you know, those are my startwos.
My star threes might be onlytwo of those.
They're the.
They're the best of the best.
Nobody, unless there's somestory to be told or you're doing

(26:52):
something unique with asequence of photos and something
just avant garde, somethingdifferent, something out there.
You really only need one or twophotos of each great sighting,
of each great phenomenon, morethan that in all, what you're
doing, if you're submitting to acontest or submitting to
editors or journalists orwhomever you're showing, what

(27:12):
that does is there's always me,one photo that's the best.
When you then think abouthaving a second photo or a third
photo, they're like oh, butthose are also good photos.
The same memorable experience.
You're just diluting it andyou're just taking away from the
best photo.
So try to stick with that very,very best and be harsh a little
bit and just ditch the rest.

(27:33):
You're not ditching thempermanently, you're just keeping
them further down in thesequence of stars that if you
ever want to come back and say,oh, you know what People love,
this will to be shot so much Iwant to contest it's in a
magazine, I'm doing stockphotography with it.
Then you say I think I havemore.
And all of a sudden you have 10other photos that are pretty

(27:53):
darn good of that same sequence.
Great, then go back and editthose.
But for your initial run, whichis usually people's final run,
stick with really the top one,maybe top two of a sequence and
then give those a star three,meaning you are going to go back
and edit these.
You are 100% going to editevery single thing that gets a
star three.
Okay, so then again, you'reworking your way through.

(28:15):
Now the added benefit is you'venow seen your entire image
library of that trip, of thatexperience.
Now, like two, three times, asyou go from from front to back,
from from earlier to later inthe trip, or whatever sequence
you feel is right, I personallygo from a chronological
standpoint you feel is right.

(28:37):
I personally go from achronological standpoint.
So now I have my star threesand this is when I start editing
.
I take every star three and Iturn it into a star four by
processing the photo inPhotoshop, or really what I use
is Adobe Camera Raw.
It's the same thing asLightroom.
So processing goes from threeto four.
So we're gonna get to theediting process in a second.
But just bear with me.
Pretend that these now star fourphotos are edited and processed

(29:03):
and they're ready to goGenerally.
I will then take that entirebatch of star fours.
I will export them into JPEG,meaning they're turning from a
raw to JPEG.
So they're my final photos.
They're rendered, they're readyfor email.
They're ready for email,they're ready for magazines,
they're ready for the website.
They're ready for whatever.
You can't export or you can'tuse a raw for much other than to

(29:25):
edit.
So the JPEG is the finalproduct.
Now you may have noticed Ididn't mention star fives.
Not every trip has a star fiverating.
I usually use star fives if Ihave just way too many photos.
Like actually, to be totallyhonest, from this past Greenland
trip I did end up with about600 final photos.
It was a lot to process.

(29:45):
I overworked myself on it.
I probably didn't need them all, but I did want to process all
these extraordinary icebergs andsunrises and sunsets and and
slow shutter photography andAurora photography and I just
wanted to do them all ratherthan try to come back to it in a
year or something.
So I did process all 600.
But I process in two differentways.

(30:06):
So my absolute select, best ofthe best, the things that I want
to show to friends and familyand post on social media and
potentially have my website andto print and do photo blogs and
articles about to teach how Igot this photo, those are my
star fives.
The star fours are things thatall made the cut, all got edited
and are all quite useful.
So for a lot of my photographygoes to natural habitat

(30:30):
adventures for use on theirwebsite and their catalog and so
on and so forth.
But it's a lot of people shots.
It's a lot of smiling peopleshots.
It's a lot of people shots.
It's a lot of smiling peopleshots.
It's a lot of travel shots.
It's a lot of vehicle shots andyou know they're great.
I like them in some ways morethan the big, beautiful, iconic
shots because they reallyrepresent my experience and what
I was working so hard tocapture and show off and

(30:51):
showcase.
But they're not what I need toshow to my relatives at
Thanksgiving, you know.
So that's just a way of saying Ido use a star rating at that
upper end of the star fours andstar fives to kind of whittle
down and choose between.
You know what is my full batchand what is just like my my tip
top selects, so you can kind ofuse them that way too.

(31:12):
And the great thing if Ihaven't mentioned this already
is that as you're selectingphotos to export in a JPEG and
place in a final folder, you canfilter out your entire album by
how many stars it has.
So, for instance, even though Imight put my top 24 or top 30
shots as a star five, I canselect star four and star five,

(31:34):
export all of them, and thenthat way it's not like I'm only
getting my star fours over totravel company and my star fives
are sitting over here.
So like star four, star five,export them all.
Boom, that's my big batch.
And then unselect star fours,export those to be top ones.
Maybe I export them as asmaller file size so I can post
them on social media or I canmake a little thumbnail gallery

(31:56):
for my website.
It gives me that flexibility.
I'm rambling on and talking alot about this, but you can tell
I'm passionate about it.
I think it's super important.
It's honestly half of theequation of photography is
dealing with your technology anddealing with your photos.
I think it's really fun to takephotos in the field.
It's really fun to be creative,but if you don't have a good
process and a good system thatyou know and love intimately to

(32:19):
do something with those photos,even if it's just organizing
them well, I think you're reallymissing half the equation of
photography in today's digitalworld.
Okay, now we are getting on tothe editing, processing,
whatever you want to call it.
We're photoshopping our photos.
I think a lot of people thinkof Photoshop, especially those

(32:39):
that are newer to photography,and either they get overwhelmed
because they go into the fullPhotoshop proper, or they hear
Photoshop and they think addingswaths of green and red and
faking photos.
That is not what we're talkingabout here.
That is not what we're doing.
Um, photoshopping process myediting, processing process is

(32:59):
really just to make a good photogreat or a great photo
excellent.
In some cases it is to rescue aphoto, it's to make a little
bit of lemonade, as I call it,when maybe the lighting wasn't
ideal but I captured some really, really unique behavior
phenomenon.
You know you can imagine howmany times that happens over the
course of a week or two naturetrip.

(33:21):
So that does happen as part ofthe overall process of editing.
I spend between one and fiveminutes on each photo.
So that's why I continuouslysay try not to keep a ridiculous
, gratuitous amount of photos,because if you start adding up
even just one minute per photoand you have 3000 photos to go
through, that's a lot of time.

(33:42):
Not only is that going to takeyou away from other great
photography in the field or yourday job or whatever else you're
doing, but you might start toget lazy and lax and you might
start to be sloppy when editing.
Lax and you might start to besloppy when editing.
So this is where I reallyencourage you to try to select
the tippy top air on the side oftoo many in very few select

(34:04):
cases, because editing andspending the time on each photo
is quite important and, asyou'll hear me say probably
again, I come back to my photosand review the editing one more
time.
I don't stick to just thatfirst pass of one to five
minutes.
I'll actually go back, justthat first pass of one to five
minutes.
I'll actually go back again andsee if I need to do anything
more, because I think fresh eyesare always really, really
important when you aremanipulating and editing photos

(34:25):
like these.
The first thing I do in AdobeCamera Raw, which again is
basically the same thing asLightroom you have all the same
features if you're a Lightroomuser is guilty.
All the same features if you'rea Lightroom user is guilty.
I hit auto.
I hit auto correct and I just Isee what it does.
I just see what it does.
We are so used to it because,remember, now you've seen these

(34:45):
photos like two, three, fourtimes already and you're
starting to kind of generate,build and solidify this image in
your mind of what that photolooks like, what it's supposed
to look like, and you're kind ofstarting to get away from what
you may have remembered itlooked like in the field.
A big part of what I'm trying todo with my Photoshop work is
I'm trying to bring the photo towhere it was when I saw it in

(35:08):
person.
Sometimes it was really vibrantbecause I was in a certain kind
of mood or we just had anamazing day and the lighting is
doing something interesting.
Even though it might nottranslate in camera, there's
just this vibe, there's thisenergy, and that's what I'm
trying to showcase and translatethrough my photos and create
art out of them.
Even if it's something that'sgoing to go into some sort of
promo detail in a magazine, I'mstill trying to make them as

(35:30):
artistic and as beautiful and asreminiscent of the experience
as possible.
So I'm very often just hittingauto right off the bat, which
essentially gets Photoshop toanalyze all the components, the
number of pixels, the color ofeach pixel, the lights, the
darks, the tones, the proportionof lights and darks, the amount
of contrast in the scene, whereare the mid-tones at, and it's

(35:53):
analyzing all this and it's justmaking its computerized best
idea at what it should look like.
You know, is there, are thereenough dark tones in the photo?
Is there enough contrast in thephoto?
You know what?
What is quite interesting is,as you get bigger and better
cameras, you will notice thatthe auto ends up being less and
less of a drastic change becauselenses have their own beautiful

(36:17):
contrast to them.
They have their own beautifulability to pick up light and
dark.
Same thing with cameras andtheir dynamic range.
So that's just an interestingaside, that the fancier
equipment you have, the lessauto is really going to analyze,
to make quote, unquote good orwhat it thinks is the best
representation of your photo.
But the one thing I want tostress here is I don't just stop

(36:39):
with auto.
In fact oftentimes I don't eventake the auto.
But auto gives me, it jolts mymind, it gets me in a different
line of thinking.
To say, you know, I've seenthis photo three, four, five,
six, seven times.
Now if I was looking in theback of my camera during the
trip, which is something thatwe're all guilty of doing, I'm
trying to look at this imagedifferently.
And let's use software, let'suse a computer brain to do so.

(37:03):
And what I do?
First and foremost, of course Isee gosh, did that improve the
photo?
Sometimes it does, sometimes itdoesn't.
Sometimes it changes the photojust too much where I can't
handle it.
There's way too much contrast,way too much dark tones, or it
blows out the highlights andit's just, it's like clearly
wrong.
But what I do take notice at ishow it changes each of the

(37:26):
sliders.
And the sliders I'm reallylooking at, they're all your
basic ones that are right at thetop.
It's your exposure, yourcontrast, your white point, your
black point, your highlights,your shadows.
So auto is going to change allthose things.
It's really not going to changea lot of the other stuff unless
you have some sort of advancedprogram or some sort of really
advanced custom mode on your, onyour Photoshop or your

(37:48):
Lightroom application.
But these main six or seventhings is what auto is going to
take care of.
And so I'm noticing how it's.
It's moving the sliders to thepositive ends of the negative
end of each one of these thingsand oftentimes you know they're,
they're askew, they're allmoved in drastic ways.
So oftentimes you know I'vegotten just good at recognizing

(38:09):
when the computer Photoshop hasadded too many dark tones.
I need to bring that back.
I'll go in and maybe I'll keepauto, but I'll undo that deep
saturation of the black point.
Or I'll undo the saturation ofthe colors itself because it's
overly saturated.
A green forest, and as we allknow, greens and oranges tend to
be very, very susceptible tooversaturation.

(38:30):
So oftentimes I'll take auto andyou know I'll trust auto to to
look at some of the complexthings, like you know, like the
white point of a photo or littlenuances in the contrast.
But then I will adjust theexposure or I'll adjust other
parts of it back to where itonce was or, you know, in some
cases, uh, I'll adjust them tomore extreme ends.

(38:51):
And that gets me to anotherreally important point of the
editing process is I really liketo play around with the sliders
and, as you'll notice, thereare far more things to choose
and to toy with than just thosesix or seven things at the top.
You know your exposure andsaturation and whatnot.
There's a litany, a long listof things you can adjust.

(39:11):
Adjust many of these things youdon't need to toy with unless
you're really, really advancedin the photoshop world.
But what I do encourage anybody,whether you're beginner,
intermediate or advanced is tostart, if you're not already,
start toying with the sliders.
When you see a photo and you'relike this could be better, it
needs something.
Or even if you don't think itneeds something, start looking

(39:32):
at how your photos change whenyou push the shadows drastically
to one end or the other.
You're probably not going tolike it all the way at one end
or the other.
I don't think any photo reallyis improved by going to the
extremes on these editing,because it's going to degrade
the photo, it's going to getreally grainy, it's probably
just going to look fake.
But you'll start to noticethrough repeated use, through
through behavior, for throughpatterns, through just

(39:54):
repetition of all this, youstart to notice what it does to
photos.
So you can take those lessonswith other photos you're working
on and instantly know where andhow they can be improved.
So I really recommend toyingwith all sliders for all your
photos, because you're justgoing to get better
understanding which sliders,frankly, don't need to be

(40:14):
touched.
It will make you more efficientas you learn what these sliders
do, not just in the technicalterms and the definitions, but
what they translate to in thephoto itself.
There are a couple other slidersthat I do like.
These tend to change a littlebit from Photoshop or Lightroom
version to version.
This is your dehaze slider yourtexture, your clarity.

(40:35):
I like them.
They're what we call metaadjustments.
They're not just affectingexposure, they're not just
affecting sharpness, they're notjust affecting mid-tones.
What they're doing is uniquethings like they're boosting
contrast while darkening darktones, but also creating a light
, sharpening around themid-tones, you know, like all

(40:56):
these kind of like long list ofthings that they just turn into
essentially decreasing haze of ascene, which is a very complex
thing to do when you think aboutit.
How do you take a foggy, mistyscene and turn it clear?
Well, it's multiple thingslayered on top of one another.
But what we're finding is youcan use these things like
de-haze and clarity clarity andyou can do really creative
things for photos that don'tneed quote-unquote dehaze.

(41:19):
They're not foggy, but you canturn landscape scenes a little
bit more dramatic.
You can turn clouds to be alittle more poppy and defined.
So I do recommend even messingaround with those three meta
sliders that are still kind ofnear the top of your slider
palette and just seeing how youlike them.
I think you should always bejudicious in what you're doing
here.
I do not recommend just goingfor the biggest, boldest, most

(41:43):
dramatic scene possible each andevery time.
Sometimes you certainly want tobe subtle.
I think there is a phenomenongoing on right now where people
just hit the dehaze slider andset it and forget it and you can
tell.
You can tell when photos looklike that they're just, they're
just too poppy, they're too big,they're too, they're too moody

(42:03):
and colorful.
So just be judicious with it.
One thing you can do as well youknow I talked about full auto,
which adjusts.
You know about six to eight ofthese different sliders.
You can also hit shift and thenyou can hit the name on the
slider.
So on the slider itself,usually in the upper left corner
, it says exposure, it sayscontrast, it says whites or what

(42:23):
have you.
If you hit shift, all thosenames will turn to auto, auto
contrast, auto exposure, and youcan start to adjust auto
balances for each one of those,instead of doing the entire
suite all at once.
I quite like that.
I think it's a cool way to lookat individual points in and
correct them, rather than just,you know, turning off the volume

(42:45):
of the whole synth all at once.
You can start to toy with thevolume of the brasses and the
woodwinds.
You know this is a metaphorhere.
So I quite like that.
That's another feather in yourcap.
Another key thing I want to sayabout editing is if I hit auto
or if I make an edit on anindividual slider and I can't
tell that it does much, I don'tkeep it.
I don't, you know, maybe itdoesn't degrade the photo, maybe

(43:09):
it helps it slightly, but I'm afirm believer that the more
edits you make, the more theinitial information in the photo
is changed.
And when you have a layeringeffect of change on top of
change on top of change, youmight start to make other
changes that are quite necessary.
And because of that small,little, tiny change you barely
needed to make, you're nowmaking a change on top of a

(43:31):
change and potentially leadingto a degradation of the photo,
making it noisy, making itgrainy, making it not what you
want.
So if an edit doesn't do much,I really tend to throw it away,
I tend to go back to zero, Itend to not make that edit
because I'm worried aboutlasting impacts of other factors
that are way more important.

(43:52):
Okay, so now let's startgetting into the advanced part
of editing.
So everything I talked about sofar is this big blanket
adjustments across the wholeimage.
I know many photographers thatnever touch full scene blanketed
adjustments.
They only do masks, they onlydo brushes, they only do
gradients and radial filters,and I'm I'm kind of one of those

(44:14):
.
I well, I guess I should.
I'm not one of those because Idon't only do that, but I'm on
that sliding scale where I tendto favor adjustments that are
partial, and we do that throughsomething called masks, and this
is, again, very easy and veryavailable.
Something that I recommend isgetting used to the shortcuts
and the hot buttons.
For instance, you can hit G fora gradient filter or J for a

(44:38):
radial filter, you can hit K fora brush filter and you can
start to instantly get thesetools on your photo, where you
can make adjustments to onlyparts of the photo.
So again, I use the brush, Iuse gradients.
Now, in the newest versions ofLightroom and Photoshop, you can
select your subject.

(44:59):
You can literally hit maskingyour subject and Photoshop
figures out where your subjectis, highlights it, and you can
make all those adjustments, allthose exposures and contrasts
and shadows, just to the partthat's highlighted, which
Photoshop does a phenomenal jobselecting.
It's kind of scary how easy andeffective it is.

(45:20):
You can hit X and get thereverse of the selection.
So if you hit subject, select,subject, mask and it highlights
your subject with wild, dazzlingaccuracy and you say, well, I
actually want to adjusteverything except for my subject
, hit X and it reverses that anddoes the inverse.
It then, within a millisecond,selects the exact opposite

(45:41):
everything but your subject.
So you can darken it or you canlighten it, or you can make a
little bit blurry to help createthat depth in the background.
So these are really reallyimportant things.
The two features that I've beenusing most often these days is
actually my gradient and myradial filters.
So what I find you know I usedto use the brush filter a lot
which basically gives you apaintbrush tool and you can

(46:04):
adjust the size of it, you canadjust the edge of it, so it's
either very feathered or veryhard brushed as you brush over
parts of your scene, and you canbrush on the sunrise to make it
a little more saturated.
You can brush on the subject tomake it a little more sharp, if
you wish, as you brush on thesethings.
Of course, you then have to usea slider to increase the
saturation or increase thetexture, but nevertheless, the

(46:24):
brush allows you to selectspecific parts of your scene.
What, what I've been noticingis other than your subject
various parts of the scene tendto look way more natural gives
you way more forgiving.
It gives you way moreforgiveness in making big,
interesting, dramatic, artisticedits when you think in terms of

(46:46):
circles or ellipses, which isyour radial mask, or in
gradients, which is yourgradient mask, and the best
thing to do is to toy aroundwith these when you're on your
computer next.
But the gradient allows you tomake adjustments, whether it's
any of these exposure or shadowsfrom a gradient that you set,
as you drag from left to rightor top to bottom, you can adjust

(47:07):
the strength of the gradient,the size of the gradient, all
that sort of stuff.
Or top to bottom, you canadjust the strength of the
gradient, the size of thegradient, all that sort of stuff
.
And the same thing with radialfilters.
I find that oftentimes I reallywant the subject in the middle
of my scene to get a little bitof extra light.
Sometimes lightening just thesubject in the middle of a big
landscape makes it look quitefake.
You know I don't want thatsubject.
You know that subject wasn'tglowing from the inside.

(47:29):
I want the whole part of thatscene, the part of that frame,
to get a little bit ofluminescence, a little bit of
brightness, a little bit ofwarming color, for instance.
And so I'll use a radial filterto not just get the subject a
little bit more edited, but partof the surrounding as well.
So, anyway, definitely worthtooling around with radial and
gradient filters, because Ithink that they make big edits

(47:51):
very palatable on screen.
Okay, so one thing I skippedover that is really quite
important at the get-go iscropping and straightening.
That is probably one of themost important tools, a tool
that I'll use with just aboutevery photo, because what that
allows you to do is it allowsyou to choose your composition
of your photo a little bitbetter.

(48:11):
Something that I'm very knownto do is to shoot wider than
necessary for a lot of my shots,because that way I'm not stuck
with the composition that I havein camera.
If I shoot wider, that way Ican actually crop in a little
bit, rearrange the photo, so Ican put my subject a little bit
more towards the middle or alittle bit more towards the edge
or top or bottom or however youthink.

(48:33):
It allows me to recompose myphoto, and that might be
adhering better to things likethe rule of thirds.
It might be incorporatingleading lines or the Fibonacci
spiral things we talked about inour composition podcast.
But shooting wider and thencropping in Photoshop is really,
really dang important, and alsowhen it comes to straightening,
shooting a little bit wider isquite helpful too.

(48:55):
That allows you, as youstraighten your photo, it will
crop it in just by the verynature of how the straightening
tool works and that way you know, as long as you didn't shoot
your photo exactly as you needit on the computer, exactly as
you need it, that thatpresentation slide or that
magazine shot, that cropping istotally permissible.
So cropping and straighteningis another really really big

(49:16):
thing to look at for each andevery one of my photo.
So cropping and straighteningis something I look at for each
and every one of my photos.
One that's quite interestingthat I do use from time to time
is the color mixer.
Now, this is a very complicatedtool that involves luminescence
and saturation and hues, andyou can pretty easily and
quickly and dramatically changethe colors in your scene, and
I'm not really into that so much.

(49:39):
I know there are a lot ofsocial media photographers that
create these beautiful moodyshots and there's some some real
trending palettes with withdark forest greens and kind of
muted burnt orange colors.
I think they're really cool,like, trust me, I love it, but
like most things, you knowthat's, that's a trend and it
may not be your individual style, so I'm not necessarily someone

(50:01):
that's going to recommend youjump on the color changing end
of the spectrum.
But I do want to point you tosomething in the luminescence or
luminance tab of this colormixer.
So color mixer, luminance thathierarchy is a really quick, fun
hack.
That I like to do, especiallywith big landscapes with big
white clouds, big blue skies, isif I if I did not shoot with a

(50:23):
polarizing filter I can actuallyinject and add a polarizing
effect to the shot.
Simply by decreasing blueluminance.
It reduces the amount of whiteor brightness in the blues,
which is one of the byproductsof using a polarizer.
So I do encourage you, justlike everything else I've been
talking about, play around withthose sliders.
You're pretty quickly going tosee that messing around with the

(50:46):
hues and the colors createsweirdly sci-fi type effects to
your shots.
But there are things that arequite useful in this pane.
This color mixer tab.
Luminance is really cool andsometimes I will use saturation
If there is specifically a colorI'm trying to make pop while
not increasing the color ofanything else in my scene, like
sometimes I might be shooting awinter scene with someone

(51:08):
wearing a beautiful bright redski jacket.
Well, there might be some greentrees in the background.
So I don't want to boost upsaturation of everything,
because greens tend to look veryoversaturated very quickly, but
I do want to boost that red.
So you know a couple of thingsI could do.
I could select my mask, mysubject mask, and I could just
saturate based on that mask,which is only saturating the

(51:30):
subject, only saturating thejacket and that red color.
Or if I want to saturateeverything red in my scene,
which might be the red of thejacket, it might be some red of
holly berries in a tree nearby.
If I really want all reds topop out, that color mixer tab
under saturation is a really,really fun tool.
Okay, I want to quickly stepaside and talk about some other

(51:51):
tools of the industry that I'dbe remiss if I didn't mention in
this editing and DIT.
Episode One is a drawing pad.
These are pads that are eitherBluetooth, wireless or you can
plug in your computer and itkind of looks like a black iPad
that you can use a pen and coloron.
Basically, these are editingpads, editing tools.

(52:12):
I see them used a lot online.
I thought they were going to bereally cool.
I got one, a very inexpensiveone, I think it was like 30 or
$40.
Um, and you know it, it's got apretty steep learning curve.
Um, you have to get really usedto using it and I've just I've
gotten so adept at using themouse and keypad and certain

(52:34):
hotkeys and shortcuts over theyears that I just don't find it
particularly useful.
But it is something to considerif you are just getting into
editing and you start that way,versus trying to unlearn
something and relearn somethingyou know decades into your photo
career.
These, I think it's calledWakamo is the name of the pad.

(52:54):
They're relatively inexpensiveon Amazon or B&H, but Wakamo
pads are quite interesting.
I'll put a link in the shownotes here so you can check them
out online.
But basically what it does isthe pen that comes with.
It is like your mouse, so youhave really really good accuracy
at not only painting ortouching up certain aspects of

(53:15):
the shot, but also it's verypressure sensitive.
So the harder you press, themore that impact is going to be,
whether you're lightening ordarkening or adding contrast.
Trust me, I 100% see theusefulness of these.
I think they'd be even moreuseful if I was doing like model
shots or headshots where smalllittle parts of someone's face I
might want to remove a blemishor increase the lighting over

(53:36):
here.
You know really kind of drawingsomeone's photo.
I can see them being veryuseful.
I just don't personally usethem.
The other thing that is outthere are color calibrators, and
I know spider is one of theleading companies.
I'll put a link in the shownotes here for one of those.
They're usually one or $200 andthey are monitor calibrators.
I can see how useful thesewould be if you are doing a lot

(54:00):
of print jobs.
But here's the thing If you aremostly doing digital media
meaning you're you're sharing onsocial media, you are uploading
to websites, most of yourmarketing is on digital websites
it's not going to matter awhole lot because the colors you
have in your photos are reallybeholden to whomever's monitor

(54:23):
is looking at them.
So someone's iPhone in thesunlight is going to view your
photos one way.
Someone's iPad in a dark roomis going to look at it one way.
Someone on a PC is going to seethis color spectrum and a Mac
is this spectrum.
So I haven't personally worriedabout over the years.
If you feel like I'm missingout, please write me a note.
Shoot me a note at wildphotographer podcast at gmailcom

(54:45):
.
Again, that's wild photographerpodcast at gmailcom.
I'd love to hear your thoughtson these color calibrators, but
since I use a pretty high endMac, since I use a pretty high
end MacBook Pro, I'm trustingthat the colors are relatively
close to what a color calibratorwould have.
Anyway, and again, I'm not doinga lot of print stuff that is

(55:05):
not going through a graphicdesigner before it goes into a
magazine.
There's a good chance.
Any graphic designer getting ahold of my photos is already
editing for the look of themagazine.
The type of paper they use, thethickness of the paper.
Is it recycled, is it not?
They're already getting editedto match exactly what the
magazine needs.
If I were doing my own stuff,if I had a gallery, if I were

(55:26):
selling photos significantlyonline, I would definitely
consider it.
I haven't yet, but it is outthere.
Just wanted to put that foryour knowledge.
We're wrapping up the episode,but one big topic remains is
final storage and use of yourphotos.
Once I've exported everything,you know whether I'm just
picking out my star fours orchoosing star fours and star

(55:48):
fives, I'm going into bridge andI'm editing and turning those
into JPEGs the highest qualityJPEG I can possibly muster.
For some reason it's on a scaleof one to 12.
I don't.
I guess that's the imperialsystem, one to 12.
But 12 is the maximum.
I'm making sure it's themaximum file size.
I'm putting my copyrightinformation in the export panel,
but I'm not doing much morethan that.

(56:10):
But I am exporting them to thatsame folder, that is, my master
trip folder, in a differentfolder just called JPEGs, such
that I now have my trip folderGreenland 2024.
Within that I have RAWs and nowa folder of all my JPEGs.
Normally, what I do next is Istart deleting all my zero stars

(56:30):
and I start cleaning up all myfiles, because I might only have
a couple weeks before my nextphoto shoot and I need to clear
up that memory.
I need to clear up the memoryon my external hard drives, my
travel hard drive.
I need to clear up the memoryon my computer.
Have a lot of room if you havemultiple trips on a hard drive,

(56:51):
so I do need to clean these upin good time.
However, before I go throughand delete anything, I do go
through all my zero stars onelast time just to make sure I
haven't missed anything.
So by now I've seen all myphotos.
You know what have I said three, four or five times and I'm
very familiar with what I have.
So I go back through my zerostars and you know, and I'll be

(57:11):
honest I'd say, for every tripthere's at least one photo that
I missed, that I did want.
And sometimes I've gone backand found one of, like, my star
five photos that just got missed, like not an actual star five
photo I processed, but somethingthat would become a star five
photo because I liked it so much.
So I think this is a really,really helpful tool.
Now that you've seen your photosso many times, as you go

(57:33):
through all your zero stars,make sure there's nothing you
want to save Again.
All you got to do is is, youknow, hit on the Mac command
period or command right carrot,that gives it that one star and
then it's saved.
I'll go back through and nowthat I've seen all my photos and
rescued any that seem to be onthe fringe and I put in the one
star batch, meaning they will besaved permanently I go back

(57:56):
through, I select all my zerostars and I delete them forever.
Yes, it's a little bit worrying, not gonna lie anytime.
I delete anything forever, Ialways kind of have to second
guess myself.
But, um, you know, you don'tknow what you don't know and
I've never regretted deletinganything because I guess I don't
go back and review those toknow that I really messed up.
So, so, either way, those aregone.

(58:18):
That saves, you know, out of300 gigabytes, that's going to
save me 5060 gigabytes,something like that.
It's pretty significant.
Now, if I have time or if I havethe, the inclination, I will go
back through my star ones andtwos just to review them to make
sure there's nothing, in thatsequence, that now that I've
been seeing all my other topphotos, there isn't something

(58:39):
that jumps out to me.
Remember, we're looking atthese photos pretty quickly on a
laptop so we can miss stuff.
I don't spend a lot of timegoing through them.
I rely on the, the numeroustimes I go through in the star
rating process, in the editingprocess, and yeah, I give it one
last chance to look at my starones and make sure there isn't

(58:59):
anything that I should goinstantly, start editing.
And yeah, if I find something,I'm going to bump it up to star
three.
I might even flag it with alittle label or I might just
make a note of the image name ona notebook.
You know we're only talkingabout four or five photos
usually, but oftentimes I dofind something that you know I
say gosh, this was such aspecial moment.
Now that I have the holisticpicture of my adventure, my

(59:20):
expedition, I realized that thisimage burst, this one thing, is
probably the single coolestthing that I've seen.
Let's save three or four photosfrom this.
Maybe they're not all going tomake star fives, but I find that
I should probably save some ofthese.
I know I'm being a little bitcontradictory and redundant here
, but nevertheless I do gothrough my star ones one last

(59:40):
time.
So now what I have is I haveagain my master folder, raws and
JPEGs.
I take my JPEGs and I put thosein a separate folder on my
computer.
I just call it my desktop photostorage.
It's where every JPEG fromevery trip I've ever done lives.
Now, jpegs are significantlysmaller than RAWs.
We're only talking about acouple hundred per trip.

(01:00:01):
So we're talking about, maybeyou know, 10 gigabytes or so.
So, yeah, I have a couplehundred gigabytes easily.
When I say 10 gigs, that's fromrecent, bigger cameras.
There's a lot of older camerasthat were like less than one
gigabyte for 102 photos.
But nevertheless I have all theJPEGs from every trip I've ever
taken on my hard drive, becausethose are what I reference.

(01:00:21):
Those are the ones when someoneasks me in my office or someone
emails me and says hey, I needa photo of a really good
Galapagos giant tortoise in theGalapagos Islands, do you have
something?
I say yes, I go back to myphotos, I get the JPEGs and I
select the best of the bestbecause they're already the best
of the best and I send them onover.
But that leaves me with what Ido with the RAWs.

(01:00:43):
Well, again, because most of thefile size is in the RAWs, I
need to get these thingsoffloaded.
I need to remove these from mycomputer and or my external
drive.
So I have two eight terabytestand up plug in Western Digital
.
I'll put the link in the shownotes Western Digital drives.
These are kind of like the oldhard drives.

(01:01:03):
They're not the solid state.
If I do update these in the inthe near term I will definitely
move to solid state.
But they're kind of the oldschool revolving, buzzing,
humming hard drives and I'd putthe entire folder in that drive.
Now I said I have two of thembecause I have vault a and I
have vault B.
I have a backup copy that, if Ineed to, if I'm going to be

(01:01:24):
somewhere for a long period oftime, um, back when I had an
office in Colorado, I would haveone of the office and one at
home.
Now I have both my drives athome.
So you know, if I, if I, if ahurricane hits or something
crazy happens, I might lose bothof those.
But the idea is, hopefully,that these are in two different
locations.
Or what's probably more likelyto happen is that one of the

(01:01:45):
drives is just going to fail.
It's not going to power on, butat least I have that other
drive.
It's never happened, but shouldit happen, the first thing I'm
going to do is go out and buy anew drive and make another
backup copy, because if onedrive fails I bought both these
drives at the same time there'sa decent chance that the other
drive is as old, maybe sufferingfrom the same defect, maybe

(01:02:07):
having just the same longevity,issues with the motor and blah,
blah, blah.
So I want to back that up veryquickly.
Hasn't happened, but I've got aplan in place.
So then.
Now I have all my raws, all myJPEGs in a master folder on to
backup drives.
I delete the raws, I deletethat folder from my computer and
now only the only thing Ireally have direct access to my

(01:02:28):
computer is that desktop photostorage where I have every trip
listed.
And then boom, greenland 2024is in and amongst the ranks.
So, phew, that was a big, deepdive.
I hope you stayed with me.
I hope you learned a thing ortwo.
I select my top 15.
I export them again into adifferent folder and then I put

(01:02:49):
that whole folder, all 15 photos, onto my iPhone and I create an
album on my iPhone.
The reason I like this is I geta lot of friends and family
asking, oh, how was your trip,how was you know?
How was such and such?
And you know going back throughand being the guy that gets on
your phone and says, well, justwait a minute, hold on while I'm
finding them.
I'm just going by date, youdate.
You're just revolving on yourphone until you find that August

(01:03:11):
2024 section.
Rather, I create my own albumwith my very, very tip top 15
photos that I know are sure toimpress and I say, oh, here we
go, hit the album, hand thephone over.
Yeah, just swipe.
Swipe at your leisure and theycan see on their own terms.
They can swipe through it andenjoy, and I find that's a

(01:03:31):
really, really good way to showpeople what you do, to maybe
build more of a literal ormetaphorical following out there
with the people you know andlove.
Get to show off some of yourwork and reap the fruits of your
labor and show off the artisticabilities that you've worked so
hard to achieve.
The last thing I do is Iconsider updating my own
personal photo website, my stockphoto websites and then any
sort of social media posts.

(01:03:53):
Again, the great thing aboutthis 15 to 25 top top photos is
that they translate very, verywell to my own website and they
translate very well to socialmedia, and having those top 15
to 25 on my iPhone already.
That way, I don't have to gothrough elaborate planning
processes where I'm getting onInstagram on my computer already
.
That way, I don't have to gothrough elaborate planning
processes where I'm getting onInstagram on my computer and

(01:04:13):
planning posts and doing allthis.
I just have them right at myfingertips If I'm waiting for an
appointment somewhere and Ihave a little bit of time, boom,
I'll throw a little socialmedia post up there and, just,
you know, very, very quickly getit out for the world to see.
Then for my stock photo website, that's a whole different ball
of wax and rather than goinginto it here, I'm going to plan

(01:04:34):
a future episode of all thingsstock photography, because I've
actually been working on a stockphotography guide as well for
you in the audience out there tolearn how best to monetize your
photos in this crowdsourcingsort of way.
We're at a point now where it'seasier and more profitable than
ever to be a small scalephotographer on the weekends, on

(01:04:55):
trips and get your photos outthere for use in a variety of
digital and print media.
Make a little bit of scratch toto help help fund your habit.
I know I certainly do.
So there you go, folks.
This is wrapping up a very bigepisode and all things
processing and editing and andphoto storage.
When it comes to digitalphotography, I will invite you
to go over to my website,wwwcourtwhalencom, and sign up

(01:05:17):
for my blog.
I do a lot of photo tutorialson my blog as well.
It might be links to some somevideos I've produced.
It might be links to otherthings I'd like to share.
But you can sign up for my enewsletter there at
wwwcourtwhalencom and then alsoshoot me an email if you'd like
to share.
But you can sign up for mye-newsletter there at
wwwcourtwhalencom and then alsoshoot me an email if you'd like.
Wildphotographerpodcast atgmailcom is the address.

(01:05:38):
I'd love to hear ideas forfuture episode comments, things
you think are working well,things you think I should be
doing differently.
So shoot me an email over there.
I'd love to stay in touch.
So once again, thanks so muchfor tuning in over and out.

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