Exercise 1 Your own workflow 1

Part 1  Workflow

Project:  A sequence of actions

Exercise 1: Your own workflow 1

The first of the exercises in DPP is based on devising and delivering a personal workflow for a specified time-limited short project.  The course notes stipulate that this needs to be a portrait session, so what better thing to do on a freezing and snowy day than to drag Mrs B outside with the promise of a portrait project …  The idea was to produce a workflow diagram of what I planned to do and then set a time limit to take around 20 photos and then edit these down to one or two final selections to demonstrate skills in working to a time limit, make changes to improve the pose etc. on the spot, and finally make the selection and process the chosen images.  The plan was as follows:

• Decide location – fields local to home – open and unobstructed views and uncluttered backgrounds
• Check battery and memory card
• Lens will be 24 – 105mm f/4 on the full frame Canon 5DMkII
• Snowy and bright conditions, so take test shots to get exposure correct
• Explain to willing model/victim what I am going to do and what I would like the outcome to be
• Position willing victim in suitable position and take full length shots, then move in with three-quarter shots and finally head and shoulders close ups
• Move round and take the above from standing and kneeling positions and shoot landscape and portrait formats
• Move location twice to take advantage of the changing angle of the light
• Complete in 30 minutes (and check the shot timings off the camera!)

The outcome of this was that the shoot took 40 minutes, which was longer than I had expected, but I took 72 images, which was more than I expected!  I took three sequences of images as well, each in a slightly different location, but each proceeding along much the same lines of homing in from a basic full length shot to selecting the best angle for the head and shoulders image I was aiming for.  The photographs were downloaded into Lightroom and a snip taken of the thumbnail views as shown below.

 

The next step of the process was to review the whole shoot and discard most images, some based just on preference and some based on a lighting angle that was ultimately not favourable, leaving a final 18 which I took forward to the next stage to look at properly in detail.

The detailed evaluation resulted in me removing more images as I didn’t think that some of the shots taken looking upwards worked particularly well (although I kept one in) and the picks were allocated a single star and filtered to give the following.

I kept these in at this stage for several reasons and as can be seen, the types of shots retained covered hood up and down, one low angle, one three-quarter shot and one landscape format.   I decided to eliminate one hooded shot (too much coat and I didn’t want to crop) when I had got to this level of comparison and I took out the long three-quarter shot as it was too far away from the true portrait I wanted.  The landscape shot and the third shot in the top row didn’t make the grade as far as the expression was concerned, in the second on the bottom row I didn’t like the way the snow ‘horizon’ cut through the eye line and therefore I was left the two below to be worked on.

This was an interesting exercise with which to start DPP and one the surprised me a couple of times.  Firstly, it took far longer than I expected, although I took far more images than I had originally intended, but I did stick to the original plan and moved the shot around to get to the final portrait that I had in my mind.  For the purpose of the exercise I did take a lot of shots I probably would not have done had I just gone out with the objective of taking a portrait shot in the snow, as I did end up with the one photograph (in the hood) that I would have aimed for straight off.  However, the lower angle, although generally not appealing to me, did yield one of my final selected images and that is worth remembering in the future.  The other surprising thing was how difficult it was to go through this process with someone I know and get any sort of natural expression!  The splash of red worked well in the snowy conditions though.  I don’t think I would make any particular changes to the workflow in the future as it seemed to be cohesive and proceed in a sensible manner.

The final shots after processing are below.

Tags: Exercise, workflow