Tuesday, September 01, 2015

Thinking about PhotoFlow, rather than WorkFlow

Understanding my PhotoFlow
It would seem everything on the Net that is photography oriented will at some time try to sell the perfect workflow. I’m not a fan because these formalised workflows soon become constraints that limit what you can do. In other words I see a rigorous workflow as anti-creativity.
I much prefer the idea the physical flow of the photo  has a lot more to do with being able to work flexibility. (I know it is not truly physical but a spatial workspace is a good analogy). For start I have several mistresses (photosoftware  like Picasa, Lightroom, AfterShot & OnOne) on all of my computers and they don’t exactly play together well. Next I am progressively changing how I organise my photos. There is still an archive of everything (less the photos I cull on import). I now have four places (separate folders on network drives) where I save and work on photos, The most important is Portfolio which is the place I store my best photos, they are not necessarily shared on the net. I have become increasing convinced you need to save your favourite photos in their fully processed view. The three other grouping are PhotoScrapbook, VideoScrapbook & Family are more work places and photos can come and go. If these get post processed the sidecar gets sent to the archive. In all these workspaces I use albums to group the photos (Rather than folder location on the disk).   Finally I have two different ways I share via the Net, the obvious social network places (to open up the image to anyone), and more importantly “private” sharing (where I can select those to share with and only them).
My workflow is still essentially a simple Shot, Edit & Share but I also see it as simple steps to move working photos into a suitable workspace.

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