Travel photography – what do you do?

[Adrian]

We have just returned from three weeks Japan (which was brilliant by the way). It was somewhat shocking to realise that between my wife and I we had shot nearly 4,500 raw images and about 40 short videos. We are keen travellers and photographers, but this was a surprise. It is a feature of the digital age, as film was so expensive to process, there was far less tendency to shoot indiscriminately.

A good chunk of the volume was caused by capturing birds in flight and mounted samurai archery with high burst rate. Plus quite a few bracketed shots of sunrises, sunsets and other things with awkward light, but even so, this is a lot of photos and somewhat daunting for selecting what to rate for processing. The vast majority will end up being discarded.

Despite my vow to take fewer shots and spend more time thinking and composing before pressing the button, many times quick shots are taken to capture a face or event “in the moment”. This especially applies to street shooting, market scenes and such like.

Clearly, on holiday, some shots are bound to be souvenir “snaps”, and some will be opportunistic rather than carefully composed. Still, my ideal is to end up with around 200 good shots that will make a credible album.

I would be interested to discover how others manage to overcome the quality over quantity issue.

Adrian

[Manfred M]

Sounds about right to me. I find that somewhere around 5% of my shots are good enough to go in an album and perhaps 1% have that "wow" factor. That has not changed since my film days and when I compare with other good photographers, the numbers are in the same order of magnitude as mine. What I have noticed is that our standards have tightened. Something I considered a "good" shot a few years ago doesn't me my current definitions of "good".

My wife and I have been on the road for almost 6 weeks now and we are probably at something like 10,000 images between us. Some (mostly taken during festivals) are a bit like your bird in flight shots; a fairly low success rates, so lots of shots required to get those keepers. Others are handled much like in my film days where I could not afford to shoot more than a roll or two of film a day.

I do find I tend to "work the scene" more and take multiple attempts at a single scene just because the cost of doing so is quite low (other than the time spent culling the shots). I find that I have a significantly lower "hit" rate with the GX7 than I do with the D800; shutter and focus lag being the main culprits here.

[Manfred M]

Sounds about right to me. I find that somewhere around 5% of my shots are good enough to go in an album and perhaps 1% have that "wow" factor. That has not changed since my film days and when I compare with other good photographers, the numbers are in the same order of magnitude as mine. What I have noticed is that our standards have tightened. Something I considered a "good" shot a few years ago doesn't meet my current definitions of "good".

My wife and I have been on the road for almost 6 weeks now and we are probably at something like 10,000 images between us. Some (mostly taken during festivals) are a bit like your bird in flight shots; a fairly low success rates, so lots of shots required to get those keepers. Others are handled much like in my film days where I could not afford to shoot more than a roll or two of film a day.

I do find I tend to "work the scene" more and take multiple attempts at a single scene just because the cost of doing so is quite low (other than the time spent culling the shots). I find that I have a significantly lower "hit" rate with the GX7 than I do with the D800; shutter and focus lag being the main culprits here. Another issue is the lighting; frankly when you are on the road, you cannot shoot under ideal conditions, so there are many shots that don't come up to snuff because we are out and about outside of "golden hour", so we tend to be fighting the lighting conditions and need more shots get usable ones.

[dubaiphil]

"Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop." - Ansel Adams

There's nothing wrong with coming away with thousands of images, and culling to hundreds to process and then tens to keep/print. One thing I was advised on very early (after coming back from the Far East with a few full memory cards) was to use Lightroom. It eases the workload considerably. Whenever I come back from a trip or shoot where I have hundreds of images I run it through Lightroom as the first stage of any PP. You can easily view images one after the other once they're uploaded, rate the files you think you like with a star system (I tend to rate what I consider to be my better shots with 5 stars which require little processing, and images which require more work with 3 stars), and then filter to see only the files that I want to work on.

Then later I can revisit the set and review if any shots fell through the net first time around. Over time, as pp skill improves there may be some images which you initially feel were unsalvageable which you may want to attack.

Personally I'd rather work the scene and have some shots in the can which may be OK rather than just holding back and trying to get a great shot, potentially missing a good moment or angle. So not "spraying and praying" but considerately working the scene.

It sounds as if as you both share a passion in photography you're at an advantage to many of us - I find the most difficult balance is finding time to shoot (and come away with images which I like rather than just postcard/holiday snaps) when on holiday with the other half!

[wilgk]

I also use Lightroom & have more images from trips than I can use. My main reason is I am not a steady 'hand-holder' & sometimes a burst mode is useful if I don't have a tripod. The middle shot is generally sharper.
As long as you have the space to store them & the time to review them, no harm, no foul I would say.

[Adrian]

Yes, we are both quite keen (and still learning of course). I use either Bride with PS CS or Lightroom. It still takes and age though to go through this many shots. I have been wondering about some blanket batch processing of the basics. Anyone do that?

[Mike Buckley]

My experience is very similar to Adrian, Phil and Manfred, so I'll make a few other points.

To begin with an aside, I remember going on vacation for two weeks and my friends were aghast to learn that I had shot 40 to 50 rolls of 36-exposure slide film. I read during that film era that National Geographic photographers shot 50 rolls of slide film each day. They were required to send all slides to headquarters. That last point was confirmed just two weeks ago in a presentation at their headquarters.

Culling digital images is a LOT more enjoyable for me than culling slides because it's so much easier to do.

Post-processing digital images is also enjoyable for me, not a labor. (I feel bad for the many people who dislike the post-processing process.) So, the more keepers I have, the more enjoyment I have in post-processing them. I custom post-process every image. The only batch processing that I do creates small files appropriately sharpened for display on the Internet, a television or a digital projector.

I also enjoy cataloging my images and I've recently learned that it's very possible that I assign more keywords to an image than most people assign. That's especially true compared to people such as myself who are intending those keywords for personal use rather than use by others.

I remove every image from my computer system that is not a keeper. Keepers range in quality from anything that only reminds us of an important travel memory and has little to no redeeming artistic quality to the few images that have wow factor.

[FrankMi]

Yes, we are both quite keen (and still learning of course). I use either Bride with PS CS or Lightroom. It still takes and age though to go through this many shots. I have been wondering about some blanket batch processing of the basics. Anyone do that?

There are some blanket processing steps that I use but I know there are others as well.

For example, when working a scene, I may take quite a number of very similar shots, sometimes with bracketed exposures. I never process them all but for those that I want to compare in more detail, I'll batch the selected images in Adobe Camera Raw. I can select all of the images that have the same lighting and open them in ACR. Once I have adjusted for a typical image from the set, I can choose Select All and Synchronize (there items are only available when multiple images are opened in ACR).

Because ACR is non-destructive I can go back and fine tune the settings on a more limited numbers of shots once I've culled out the keepers. As I mentioned in Fall Foliage, I took 92 images of this one tree.

[TonyW]

We have just been on a trip across Australia lasting 12 days. I took 1,058 photos but was generally rather disappointed. If I finish up with as many as 50 that I want to show anybody I will be pleased. So far I can see 2 or 3 that might have a wow factor.

I use Bridge for a quick review and rating, then PS to process anything that might have potential. Many of the shots are taken more for the record than for any artistic value.

[dubaiphil]

Well in LR you can synch adjustments, and they're non destructive, so that's a win win. So if you took 30 shots in a market and forgot to readjust your exposure comp or white balance from a previous shoot you can easily synch and adjust all relevant shots.

[tclune]

I have had to fight the tendency to shoot too many photos. For me, the problem is that I'm too lazy to actually go through that many shots once I get home. So it really makes little sense to shoot them in the first place (or, it makes sense for me to ruthlessly delete after shooting.) I just got back from ten days in Turkey (Istanbul and Cappadocia. Wonderful time.) I took about 550 shots after pruning, and hope to keep and process about a tenth of those. I am willing to review all of them, but that's pretty much the upper limit of my attention span.

BTW, this trip I tried a new set of lenses for travelling. I used to take four lenses with me when I travelled, and it was just too much stuff to carry. This time, I got the Nikon 18-140 for my D5000 as my main all-purpose lens and the light and tiny Nikon 35mm f/1.8 for indoor shooting. The whole kit was easy to carry and I didn't feel disadvantaged by the compromise. Unless I change my mind as I'm processing the shots, I think I may have found my usual travelling set. But I'll use my more versatile lenses still when I'm home and unconcerned about weight.

[rpcrowe]

IMO, you cannot shoot too many images! Often several images of a scene or subject basically look the same except for small details which might not be noticed at the time of shooting. These details could be a slight difference in facial expression, it the placement of hands or slight differences in the background or the edges of the image.

I use fast UDMA capable CF cards and a UDMA capable card reader. This combination provides increased download speed. That speed is a great help when I am traveling because my workflow starts with downloading and duplicating my images and then formatting the cards. I do a cursory look at my images just to interdict any noticeable equipment malfunctions but, I do not do any editing (other than duplicating my images on external hard drives). I don't have any desire to send an illustrated account of my adventures while I am on the road...

The faster UDMA capable cards also allow faster shooting because my 7D cameras can process the images at a greatly increased speed.

I don't work with Lightroom, instead I use ACR + Adobe Bridge and keep the images in a filing system of my own (rather than letting Lightroom file the images for me). I know that it is OPERATOR ERROR but, I have had problems finding images that were saved in Lightroom.

Memory is very inexpensive these days so I can afford to carry enough memory that I never have to limit my shooting due to lack of memory. I also have several external hard drives which I use to save my images....

I have just downloaded the On-One Perfect Photo Suite Version 9 and will try the Browser Module. It is hyped to be far faster than V.8 or Lightroom.

However, I am never in a hurry to edit my images. I may at the end of a trip select a few images to send to friends and family members but, I take my time in selecting and editing images in general. Since I ALWAYS shoot RAW, I have a selection of images that I can fall back upon to test new editing procedures and/or software.

One thing that I do accomplish, after basic exposure, contrast and input sharpening, after working with levels, and after tweaking my images, but before cropping and before output sharpening; I save the the image as a PSD Master Image. Then, I do final cropping, sizing and output sharpening on this Master Image for whatever product I want to produce.

That way, in the future, I can produce any format, sizing and/or cropping that I need for output. I might originally want the image in portrait configuration but later need that image in landscape configuration for a calendar. Saving the image as a Master in PSD format allows me the flexibility to produce just about any product I want without having to go back to the drawing board with my original RAW file...

[Shadowman]

We used to average about 20 rolls apiece when shooting with film, with digital I can easily shoot 500 images per day. I don't concern myself with quantity as long as I've got a laptop to transfer the images to at the end of the day.