Camera Labs

Out of the camera bag, of course.
What's your workflow after shooting an event?

I tend to import everything in Lightroom, subdivide in folders for large events (seperate folders for bands etc.), toss out the obviously bad photo's (love/hate stage lighting), mark the potentials, pick favourites from the marked, and edit them.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

After a shoot, I usually end up with 500 - 1000 photos. I then import these images into Bibble (like Lightroom, only better ). I need to whittle these images down to a select bunch for the wedding album. Normally, each album has about 60 - 80 photos so there is a lot to sort through. I rapidly step through the images, spending no more than 3 seconds on each one. I figure that if I have to take longer than 3 seconds to come to a decision, the photo is probably not that good. The photos that are good, I mark with 1 star and I leave the other photos unrated.

Working at this speed, it takes me about 1 hour just to sort through the photos to separate the keepers from the rubbish. Once the photos are sorted, it's time to start work on them. I limit most of my edits to work that can be done in Bibble. This has two benefits: 1) It improves my photography because it forces me to get as much as possible right in camera. 2) It speeds up my turn around time.

At the editing stage, I try to spend no more than 5 minutes working on each photo unless the client is particularly keen on an image, and wants a very large print of it. 5 minutes x 80 photos = 400 minutes = about 7 hours. Add the hour it takes to sort through the initial images and you've just given yourself a full day's work to process the images from the previous day's shoot. As a general rule of thumb, for every hour of photographic coverage, I expect to spend 2 hours in post processing. For comparison, I know some wedding shooters who do 15 minutes for each hour of photography, some advertising photographers who spend 4 - 6 hours for every hour of photography.

Some other random comments. I would really love to just run my images through DXO. The results tend to be very beautiful and print wonderfully. However, DXO is really slow both in the interface and during processing. These days, I just run the "special" images through DXO and leave the rest to Bibble. Also, try to get as much right in camera and this will save you loads of time in post processing. You might be able to get away with mucking about in post processing when you're just starting out and the volume of work is low, but this is just setting yourself up for trouble down the line if your volume of work goes up. In short, if your operations don't scale then you're heading for financial disaster.

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PhilipGoh.com

I just use Capture NX2,then after basic modifications,onwards with Photoshop.
I've noticed Bibble is much faster than NX2 & is very well equiped,but I'm keeping that option for when I'll be doing a wedding or another event which requires big amounts of photos.

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Gear: Nikon D80, 18-105mm, 35mm F/1.8, 85mm F/1.8, SB-600
Visit my work here

Interesting, I might take another look at Bibble then. Perhaps even DxO, I can live with it crunching my pictures in a batch when I take a well-deserved nap

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".