The Gestalt effect refers to the form-forming capability of our senses (the word Gestalt in German literally means “shape” or “figure”), particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves.

from Wikipedia

Basically, a bunch of psychologists spent lots of research to figure out how we view images and derive meaning from them.

Turns out, this research is very useful for thinking about photography. Jeff Curto put together two podcasts explaining the connections:

• Go With the Gestalt (part 1, part 2)

The four main visual ideas to add meaning to your photos are:

• Closure
• Continuance
• Similarity
• Proximity

Reading the wikipedia article with a view to photographic composition can help open up some visual opportunities. Jeff’s podcast is very useful for thinking about the creative side of photography.

Pressing the shutter on the camera is the simple bit. Once the photo is taken there are a large number of options around workflow. This is my current process.

Transferring the Photos

The obvious way to get photos from the camera to the computer is via USB cable. I don’t like doing this for a few reasons. One is that it drains the camera battery, the other is that it can be slow.

I use a card reader to mount the memory card on my computer and then use Lightroom (LR) to copy the files across.

Depending on my camera or the shoot, I may assign a pre-set on import. This matters more on my Point & Shoot (P&S) cameras, as the default processing is fairly bleh. Adobe’s defaults for my Canon SLRs is usually pretty good as a starting point. I also have a metadata pre-set that assigns various contact & copyright information to the image. I add additional metadata, such as keywords, as I import.

With folder structures, I’ve been through a few. My current layout is to place everything from one “Event” into a date prefixed folder. This can be assigned in the Import dialog. For example, if I went to Banff, it would be “2009-02-15 Banff”. The date indicates when I off loaded the photos, so the folder can span multiple days for an event. I can also have multiple folders per day.

The advantage of this layout is that if I stop using Lightroom, I still have a vague chance of figuring out where a particular photo is. When it was just by date, there wasn’t enough information in the file system to be helpful.

Initial Edit

After LR has built the previews, and sometimes while it is, I will do an initial edit. At this point, I’m viewing the photos for the first time on a computer. If I consider an image acceptable, it gets one star (‘1’ on the keyboard). If a photo is beyond usable, such as bad focus or lens cap on, I’ll set it as a reject (‘x’). Depending on the shoot, I’ll delete the rejects from disk (Ctrl-Backspace / Cmd-Delete). Occasionally, if I really like an image on first viewing, I will give it two stars (‘2’).

From this point, I use the filtering in LR so that I will only see 1 star photos or higher ratings.

Second Edit

The second time through, I’m more critical of the photos. Each much be interesting in its own right to receive two stars (‘2’). While I’m viewing the photos I’m in the Loupe view (‘e’). I typically have LR maximized (‘f’)  and with the sidebars hidden (Shift-Tab). I also darken the user interface. I set the dim level in preferences to 50% and use this to hide most of the UI.

When there are several images that are very similar, such as in a portrait or sports shoot, I’ll use the compare (‘c’) mode so I can see images side by side. Pressing the up key while in this mode promotes an image to the left, while allowing you to continue through. Promoted images will get two stars.

If I want to see more than two images at once, I use the survey view (‘n’) after selecting the images from the grid (‘g’).

Post Production

After filtering down to two star images, I start to consider candidates for post-production. It is very rare that I’ll output an image without some level of post. Much of this I now do in LR.

Still with dim set, I switch to the Develop module (‘d’) and start applying corrections in LR. This can include things like fine tuning white balance, exposure, saturation, sharpening or applying subtle vignettes. Much of this I save in pre-sets, so can apply with a single click and preview before applying. Sometimes I use pre-sets from other sites to try out different looks.

If I have a series of similar photos, I’ll use LR to adjust one of them and then sync the settings to the other photos in the shoot. I do this often to set the white balance from a gray card (or by eye) and then make it the same for all the shots.

With the adjustment brush and gradient filter in LR2, there is much less time I spend in Photoshop (PS). There are still some images that I’ll finish in PS. These are typically composites, or portraits that require more retouching. I use LR to manage the PS files and to group the PS file in a stack with the original image.

Once I finish in Photoshop, I’ll occasionally re-adjust things further in Lightroom. At this point, I consider the image done.

Final Edit & Presentation

Once post is complete I try to leave some time before doing a final edit. At this point I’ve spent too long with the photos and am not very objective. I find more clarity after a night’s sleep. The images that are in my mind when I wake are often the stand out ones. Editing right away often means that the one I spent the most time on is foremost in my mind, and may not be the best image.

In the final edit, I’ll assign three star images (‘3’). These are ones that I consider the best of the shoot.

If I want to group images for export to a particular destination, I’ll use one of the colour labels (‘6’) or the Quick Collection (‘b’) to select them. Then I can filter based on these properties and export to external systems or print. Flickr, Gallery or Facebook all have plug-ins for LR, so can be configured as export pre-sets. Make sure to set the colour space to sRGB and set the appropriate size and sharpening for the destination. Having the destination web site re-size and (not) sharpen results in less great images.

I also have some pre-sets for exporting with the right file format and colour space for the print labs.

Now that I have a photo printer at home, I will often print a proof before sending to an external lab. This allows me to see what the photo will look like printed. It is a different experience to hold the photo in your hands than see it on the screen, and I’ll often go back to post and make changes.

Archival

Up until this point, the workflow has been carried out on one of my laptops. I have two copies of the image (one on the card, one on the computer). As I use the camera to format the cards prior to shooting, this gives me some redundancy. However, the images need to be archived.

This is an area that I can improve. My simple strategy is to copy across to an external USB mounted hard drive. Ideally, I should backup to a second hard drive and/or burn to DVD.

Future Usage

My pictures now are easy to find using Smart Collections. Any long term projects that I’m working on get specific keywords assigned and turn up in a specific Smart Collection that searches for the keyword and a particular star rating. I also have some collections based on year, so I can see how I’m progressing.

I can use search to locate images for particular projects, or select images for trying out a new Photoshop technique.

Ever few months, I’ll go back over my 3 star images to consider candidates for 4 stars. The 4 star images are ones I would consider for portfolio usage or fine art sale. To date, I have less than a handful of 5 star images. These are ones that I consider ‘wow’.

My aim is to shoot more images that make it to 5 stars.

Media 09 is a new media conference held in Sydney. I attended last year’s, and missed this year due to being in Canada. Fortunately, Brad from lagrangepoint was there and blogged many of the talks.

Below are some of the highlights from his coverage (click through for full articles):

Brian McCarthy, Fairfax CEO:

In discussing the media environment, he pointed out the differences between the US and Australia, including the greater investment in colour printing and the more discreet geographic distribution of our population that has protected Australian publishers.

He also reiterated his faith in content - and quality journalism - being the key to survival, as the company continues to merge its print and online offerings and diversify into new markets

Caroline Little, from The Guardian News and Media USA:

The role of the newspaper as a record of yesterday’s news has gone, and newsrooms need to adapt.

The newspaper is now no longer the most effective means for an advertiser to reach an audience, with the market becoming more fragmented.

She said there are four key areas - multimedia storytelling, database journalism, reader engagement and citizen journalism. Fear of failure must not hold proprietors back.

Understanding Twitter and Facebook are vital for understanding engagement and their viral nature, and it is important to understand how content is being distributed away from the publisher’s website.

Nic Newman, BBC:

Content must also be made sharable, within the boudaries of content rights, via widgets and other portals so that content gets to where the audience actually is.

Ben Self, used social media for the Obama campaign:

There were more than 1800 videos distributed to supporters, and 50 million views of this content. 68 million Americans were reached either online or in person throughout the campaign. More than US$770 million was raised - US$500 million raised online.

He said that having a dynamic and interesting email program was crucial, with more than 13 million on the distribution list by the end of the campaign. They also made it easier for people to communicate themselves through the web site.

He also looked at tools to target and organise voters geographically, to help get people in neighbourhoods together who want to be part of the campaign.

 

Meg Pickard, The Guardian Community manager:

“We didnt make any money, but we generated an enormous amount of goodwill,” Pickard said. “We sold several hundred, but we had seveal thousand people linking to it on Facebook.”

There is a wholly trinity of technology, people and editorial. She also talked about the transition from casual users to connected users, committed users and finally catalysts - the final category being the ones who represented less than 1 percent of the audience, but are blogging and twittering about you, saving stories on del.ico.us and creating pages on Facebook, that you need to find a way to engage with.

 

Richard Cardran, Emmy award winner for his work in digital media:

Cardran says we have reached a point of maturity, to the point where if a business doesn’t have strategies in business for Facebook, MySpace or mobile, then they really should, because all it takes now is willpower.

Cardran says you need a strategy for ecosystem and for syndication, and that leads to a meta strategy. He spoke about creating value around an object, service or presence, not the object, service or presence itself.

End users should be allowed to design custom virtual newspapers and magazines, and they should be able to virally distribute their custom publications. He says newspapers should also create hyper-localised applications to exploit local advertising revenue.

Recent reports highlight Internet Explorer’s drop in percentage of internet users. Given the huge war between Mozilla and IE, it sounds like big news, but is it?

These days I don’t think browsers are as important. The innovation in one is rapidly copied to another. The UI differences between Firefox, IE, Safari and Chrome are minimal. Each of them does a good job of rendering standards based HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Each vendor has a use for their browser. Microsoft has a component version of IE it can embed in most of Windows. Apple has a component version of Safari that it can use across Mac OS X and iPhone OS. Google’s browser is optimized to run Google’s style of application. Firefox is a great platform for building browsers, while also being a browser.

The important thing today is to own a destination worth browsing to. And that is a much harder challenge.