What to Do With Your Downtime

Everything in our world has been turned upside down.

Social distancing or a complete isolation has forced on us an abundance of time. What do we do to creatively and constructively fill the time? As a location and travel photographer, this has really impacted me and others in this world of photography very hard. Last year I shot in 31 countries, for National Geographic Expeditions and our own FirstLight Workshop. In January of this year, as an Expert on a National Geographic Expedition, I photographed in 11 countries. Since that time, I’ve had a number of international trips cancelled, both via National Geographic Expeditions and our FirstLight Workshop.

How do I fill my time? Co-founder of our FirstLight Workshop, my business partner, as well as my wife, Becky has been gently suggesting for years that I clean out my multiple file cabinets, a repository for film over my decades-long profession. Many of my images are with a stock photography agency (the stock world has been devastated, but that’s another long story)

Now, with the luxury of time, I have spent the several days going through those photos.

• Round 1: Eliminating all the obvious: hip shots, out of focus, eyes closed.
• Round 2: I become more critical: I’ll eliminate those images that are close seconds to the best. No reason to keep those UNLESS it has a real value.
• Round 3: This is the step that really starts to clean the decks of those unwanted images. If I hesitate on the photo for a few seconds, I’ll keep it. If there is an obvious “killer” image, why keep those leading up to or falling off of that moment? After this round, I’ll use Photo Mechanic to rename my photos (discussed below) and to put in that important IPTC info. (IPTC, or International Press Telecommunications Council)More info below on this. Next step, keyword those photos-further info below on this incredibly important step.
• Round 4: This is a critical round of culling which occurs a few weeks later, when I’m out of the “sensory” influence of that place. I’m far enough away from the moment, that I’m not being influenced by the sounds of the place, the smells of the landscape, the memory of the wind blowing by, or whatever other sensory input that has NO influence to the strength of the image. It simply comes down to “does the image work?” at this point. This is important, as your audience will also be viewing the photo without those components.

IPTC

This is part of the metadata that’s available to the user. Here, you can put in all important information for your photo, including copyright info. I can’t tell you how important this can be for the photographer. Everyone has that box of old family photos, and many have no info as to who those people are in the image. You don’t want to throw out history, so you keep them, hoping they are indeed your ancestors. Now, you have that power at your fingertips to input those names and places to all those photos.

Your Olympus E-M series cameras actually have the ability to input your copyright in every photo. Here’s the path to that:

• Go to your menu, Gear > H1 > Copyright Settings > Artist Name > input your name.

• Backout to Copyright Settings by clicking the menu button

• Go into Copyright Name > Input your name

• Backout to Copyright Settings by clicking the menu button

• Go to Copyright Info. > Select “On”

KEYWORDS

Another huge power of the digital technology that everyone should utilize. Many photo software packages allow you to search for images via keywords.  What a perfect time we have now to go through all of our old digital images and input this info. One can become as deep on keywording as they want. I have a master keyword of “Animals”, then subset folders in Lightroom for specific animals.  One can break it down further to “Birds” etc. If you become diligent on creating a keyword for all images, the ability to find that image is pretty instantaneous. Adobe Lightroom has a panel on the right side of the Library module, in which the keywords are listed. Lightroom and other database programs make it really easy to apply keywords, either singly or in a huge bunch.

BACKUP

In talks and lectures, I’ve always emphasized the importance in digital photography of having a backup plan. This is realistically a fairly fragile technology; the chances of you experiencing a hard drive failure are 100%. Backup is critical and must be a first line of defense in your workflow.

I have RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) systems, that contain from 2-8 hard drives, configured in such a way (RAID 6) that if I have failure/crash of up to 2 of the disks on my 8-bay RAID, I can still recover all images. I also use single Hard Drives for specific groups: National Geographic Expeditions, FirstLight, etc. I had a major hard drive failure early in my digital career, containing images of our son going through his Eagle Scout project (which was also an assignment for Boys Life Magazine, the official publication of the Boy Scouts), without backup. I lost everything up to that point, which was only about 15% of the start of his project. I sent my computer in, was told I had to pay, upfront, over $ 1,000.00 for an attempted recovery, with about a 10% chance of getting anything. Since then, I’ve been overboard, but is that really too much if you lose something as valuable as your photos?

Your computer will provide you a structure with which you can automatically backup your files. This brings up another thought: do NOT use your main computer hard drive as the main repository for your photos. That 1 Tb hard drive you bought as an upgrade when you purchased your computer will quickly become filled if you are an energetic photographer. I suggest using a database program such as Lightroom to manage your photos and to have your main folder of images on dedicated external, along with backups to a separate drive or drives. The beauty of Lightroom, your main photo catalog CAN reside on your main hard drive, as the catalog contains “pointers” to your photos on that external, creating a “path” to those images. The catalog, therefore, is a small footprint.

SELF-ASSIGN

We’re experiencing a major event in our lives, if not one of the most consequential in this country’s history.  The need to document this is huge and illustrates one of photography’s most critical purposes: documentary and reportage. Through imagery, we are able to look back at huge events, as well as quiet and personal events, in our history. Even with self-quarantine, you should be creating a day-to-day log of photography of how this impacts you. How do you photograph those stockpiles of toilet paper, of the food you’ve stored?  Create a series of photographs of how your family members are addressing this from wearing masks to go out, donning gloves to fill the car with gas. If venturing out, and obviously with safety foremost, how about the empty streets in your town? This is a time that will hopefully not be replicated in our lifetime, so the need to visually document our experience is critically important.

Also critical here: captioning your photographs with important info so there are no questions as to what is occurring in the photograph. Again, here is a power of digital photography, that ability to input that information in the IPTC file.

So, we’ve started building a carefully organized group of images, caption info and keywords (a few suggestions for keywords: Coronavirus, self-quarantine, virus, quarantine) input via our photographic software of choice. What do you do besides archive these photos?  This will be over, and having a book created of this historical period will be an important addition to your personal library.

CREATE YOUR OWN BOOKS

Many photo software packages (Lightroom, Apple Photos, PC equivalents) allow you to build a photo book. When culling those photos for this, approach it with a clear purpose, letting the title create the theme and content. “Smith family Coronavirus 2020”, or “How our town dealt with a major event”. Then, go through those images, using a critical eye to see what works and what doesn’t. A great thing about these books is you can also add text, so speak to your family household members, using their paragraph description of what they feel as text blocks. This makes it a personal and intimate look into this event. These book templates in software allow you to build a “work in progress” adding or changing the layout, based on how this goes.

OTHER PHOTO-DRIVEN IDEAS

I come from the world where the print is the obvious fruition of the photographic process. Holding a print in your hands, then framing the photo to put on the wall is the final step in the process.  This empowers the intimacy and personal nature of still photography that I love so much.

There are a number of great photo printers on the market, from Epson to HP to Canon. And with prices ranging from low to high, choose one that uses archival inks or pigments, so your images will last. (current achievability criteria is a projected 200 years). I use a Canon Pro-1000 printer, and I’ve been very happy with the results. And I know photographers using other brands that feel strongly about their brands, so it’s a personal choice that I won’t address here.

Another suggestion for a good printer: multiple cartridges for more accurate and refined color output. The printer I use uses 12 cartridges. A lot, but this allows for far more subtle color definition.

In our FirstLight Workshop series, we’ve conducted workshops built around great photo opportunities along with sessions on printing. Many come through those loving the idea of taking complete and ultimate control by printing themselves, others have found that information as important and instructional, but they’ve decided that their lives are already pretty full without the need to create a new addiction of printing. Many of those have turned to their local lab to print, or one of the many high-quality printers available on-line. 

Calibrate Your Monitor  

This is one, if not the most important steps in making sure the print you receive looks like it did on your monitor. The computer manufacturers are smart in that they send it to you with brightness cranked up to “11”. On that great monitor, your images look stellar: bright, contrast-y, full of rich colors. If printing based on this, your final result is almost always a disappointment.  Calibration of your monitor, and using a “profile” from your lab (they will tell you how to install, quite easy) then creates a more balanced look between monitor and print.

Be prepared: when calibrating, the brightness will not be as spectacular, and the colors may be a bit more muted. You can then go into your software and make the appropriate changes to make that print and monitor look closer. You’ll never get a print ( a reflected-light surface) to appear as rich and deep as seen on the monitor ( a read-screen projection) It’s the nature of this particular beast. (another reason smart phones have become so popular, beyond the “in-you-hands” aspect, as the engineers write the algorithms to make the image look incredible on a small display.

But, the more one prints, the more one realizes this is a unique and separate world from smart-phone screens. A good print has a depth and quality that a screen can’t replicate.

Do Your Homework on Your Online Printer

Look at reviews of the lab, eliminating the very best and the very worst reviews to get a fairly accurate assessment of their work.  Look at policies: what will they do if you’re not happy with the print. What is their turn-around time from receiving to shipping?  Consider sending them an 8 x 10” print order, one image you know well and know how it should look. The print they send can tell you a lot about that lab.

Choose your paper choice carefully! There are so many different paper choices out there, beyond the simple matte or glossy. I’ve found that different surfaces are appropriate for different styles of work. A good lab will offer choices. This simply takes homework on your part, but it is also great to know you have this additional step of control over the final image.

What to do With Those Prints  

So, you’ve started taking that control of your images and outputting prints. Besides sticking them in a drawer, what do you do with them?

I’ve discussed doing books above, and one of the other outlets for that print is to frame it. This can get costly quickly, as a really good framed print from a top-notch shop can cost hundreds of dollars for a 16”x20” or 20”x24” framed print. For those incredible images, this can be worth the time and money, as this can be a long-term investment that be enjoyed for decades to come.

Podcast Suggestions

This Week in Photo (TWIP) https://thisweekinphoto.com

PetaPixel https://petapixel.com/podcast/

The Candid Frame, hosted by Ibarionex Perello. https://www.ibarionex.net/thecandidframe

For those Micro FourThird and Olympus users, check out “Mirrorless Minutes” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mirrorless-minutes-photography-podcast/id1142025771

Pulitzer Podcasts, just for your enjoyment. https://player.fm/podcasts/Pulitzer