Photo Update

Just a brief update. I haven't started writing up a travel essay for last week's trip yet, as this time I want to actually get the photos done first. I've gone through the Budapest photos and am currently "developing" the ones from Vienna. I snagged the new version of ACDSee yesterday for its enhanced compatibility with my new camera's CR2 "Raw" format and so far so great! The software can actually view and manipulate the Raw file prior to developing it in Photoshop -- for those who don't know, the Raw format is essentially a digital negative and you actually develop it in a special plug-in program for Photoshop just like film, only I do each one individually.

So, here's what I'm doing.

I transferred nearly 4 gigs of photos onto the harddrive and am currently going through them and rating them. I then go through and develop all of the 5-star photos one at a time in Photoshop. These shots then get given descriptions and copyright info and added to the gallery. Note that I don't manipulate the actual composition of the photo -- I don't do anything you couldn't do in a traditional darkroom. Afterwards, I go through all of the 4-star photos and select any that I want to include in the final gallery for variety's sake. I then develop these, assign the descriptions, and add them to the gallery.

For those who are curious as to how many photos I'm actually talking about, not to mention how critical I am of my shots, here's some stats:

- I delete approximate 3 of every 5 photos I take while "in the field".
- I arrived home with a total of 435 photos (so I probably took over 2000 in total).
- There were 94 keepers from Budapest.
- I assigned 7 of them a 5-star rating and immediately added them to the gallery.
- On further review I decided to include 3 photos that I initially gave a 4-star rating to.

So there you have it. I probably took close to 300 photos while in Budapest, kept 94 of them, and will add exactly 10 of them to the final gallery. Many of the others will be deleted and some more will be used for photo albums and other personal usage. But only 10 will make it to my pro gallery. And that's why I'm so glad I don't shoot film anymore.

2 comments:

Jessica A. Walsh said...

Were you aware that your link to your gallery is currently not working?

Maybe because you're updating it?

Doug Walsh said...

Yep. I've been in the middle of revamping the way it was organized and changing some things. That's been a dead URL for quite a while. It will be back and working as soon as I get through these photos. Hopefully by the end of the week.