Workflow

Every course is different in approach, subject, and complexity; each brings with it a new challenge.   Stepping up to Level 2 during the Landscape course I discovered that my best work was done over an extended period of time enabling progressive development of ideas and simply access to a much wider variety of conditions than would be possible in a short time period.  Assignment 3 needed 25 separate shoots over 3-4 months, whilst the Portfolio kept me busy for the better part of a year.  At times I cursed the complexity of creating the portfolio, however,  the prolonged photographic engagement with the Olympiagelande led to an empathy with the land and how it changed over the seasons.

With Social Documentary I am embarking on yet another prolonged photographic study, but this time one that should last for the duration of the course and beyond.  The removal of the need to do a Portfolio for this course does not change the fact that creating such a study is an invaluable exercise in developing as a photographer.  However, I want to go beyond the Portfolio, in a sense I plan to turn the whole course into a single body of study.  Since starting with TAOP, 3 years ago, the content of my work has progressively become Munich, landscape and people.  With Social Documentary, Munich will be the subject, for projects and for assignments, although in contrast to Landscape it will be the people rather than the place that drive the study.

My proposed working model will be to plan in advance weekend photographic studies of the city driven by a number of themes:

• Districts: Capture the essence of the different quarters of the city, from rich to poor
• Events & Festivals: Every weekend in Munich something is happening somewhere
• Public Spaces: the civic buildings, places of worship, parks and museums that are the heart of the city

Each "location" shoot will have two goals, firstly to complete the requirements of the ongoing project structure in the course, secondly to slowly accumulate a body of work that will become Assignment 4 of the course, a study of Munich that channels the work of Robert Frank.  Assignment 2 should also fit into this framework, but will depend on whether I can capture a coherent body of work.  I leave open the thought of using Assignment 2 to document the Oktoberfest.

With this comes a challenge and that is one of workflow, how do I plan to manage and sort the photographs that I capture across the coming year.  My tool set for this will be Adobe Lightroom, however, I need to start building a structure and process that enables me to capture and sort the images in a meaningful way.  

1. When completing a shoot download all images into a folder labeled with the location and date of capture
2. Sort the images into keepers for the 3 tasks I am trying to complete, the current project, Assignment 2 and Assignment 4.
3. Process the images with a consistent strategy to enable the sets to hang together.
4. For the assignments limit the number of new images to no more than 10 per shoot and carefully label with the date, location and some notes about what went on that day - keywords might help here
5. For the project follow my usual process of keeping a set of collections, labeled "P1 Name of Project" and so on
6. When writing up the project also post images and a description of the event from which they came, whether they comply with the project or not - in this way my blog will become a gradual documentation of the development of my assignments.
7. Periodically sort through the assignment images to select the best as an ongoing straw horse for the assignments
8. Back everything up as often as possible.

I guess this is the digital parallel of creating contact sheets and marking up the images of interest.

Normally I would not document this activity, but wanted to think it through in a logical manner and produce a record of what was planned to see if I do follow my own advice on this.