MacWorld continues to buzz on. The Keynote yesterday was incredible and, along with many of the other Inside Aperture bloggers, I was lucky enough to have a great seat right up front. Both the AppleTV and the iPhone look great and it looks like i’ll be picking up one of each as soon as they ship. The amount of activity on the show floor started high right after the keynote and picked on up from there. I thought it might be a little quieter today, but that wasn’t the case. If anything, there was more buzz today than yesterday on the show floor—at least where I was spending all of my time.
Since it’s Wednesday, it means that I’m at the half way point of my job here. This part of shooting an event centers all around capture. It’s a circular process of shooting, importing cards of data into Aperture (and making backup copies), and then shooting some more. For the particular job I’m on, I have the luxury of not needing to make final picks at this point. There’s no pressing need for immediate picture delivery. This lets me focus on capture. So, at this point, my use of Aperture is constrained to uploading my files and then browsing them to get a sense of how the shoot is going.
The workflow I’m using right now goes something like this:
- Import my images from CompactFlash into Aperture.
- Copy the images from CompactFlash onto a separate external hard drive.
- Sort through the newly imported images and find all the ones that are obviously bad.
- Find the images that are really good and mark those so that I have an idea of what I’ve got in the bag—and what I still need to do.
- Erase the CompactFlash cards by formatting them in my camera.
You’ll notice that erasing the images isn’t something I do with my laptop. I only erase cards after I’ve copied the images to 2 different hard drives. For paying gigs, I can’t stress enough how important it is that you make sure that you can always get back to your original files if something goes wrong.
As I import the images, I’ve found that it’s important to do as much in the Import Panel as possible. This means setting the auto-stacks settings appropriate as well as adding in all the right metadata. For example, here’s a screenshot of one of my imports:
The stacks that are formed by the Auto-stacks feature are, for me at least, a temporary grouping. I’ll typically refine these stacks by splitting or joining after import. But it’s nice to have a sense of grouping on the first run through a shoot. As for the metadata, here’s what I set on import:
By setting this metadata here, I only need to add the Headline and Caption fields for the individual images as I work my way through them. The data that’s the same for all of the images is already taken care of.
This is all pretty straightforward. The important part of managing photos at this stage in your workflow is consistency. This means making sure that you do the same routine each and every time you dump in your cards will help make sure that you do the right thing even after being up on your feet for 12 hours straight.
I recently finished shooting an event and can relate completely with your comment on 12 hours being on foot.
I did all my dump to the laptop and external drive at the end of the day.
Looking back I wish I had spent more time like you did in looking at what was not useable and what was good. I did not do this very faithfully except for a few times during the 5 day conference. Had I done this, I could have realized early that I needed better photos of 2 of the presenters... one of them being related to the editor (ouch!).
KG: I haven't ditched the FW 800 drive. The library as well as the referenced files that I import live onthe LaCie Rugged FW 800 drive and then also get copied to the FW 400 LaCie normalish drive as well.
Unfortunatly, I haven't a place to stash stuff on site. This is one of the things I should have done a better job of prep wise, but conference staff never seem to want to deal with the needs of the photographer needing a lock up in the run up to a show, so I've pretty much given up on asking. When my laptop is with me on site, my laptop stays on my back. Today, I left it at the hotel so that I didn't have to lug it. But I took the FW 800 drive with me to make sure that I had data on me. Just in case something went wrong at the hotel. My back feels much better today than it did yesterday.
And yes, I copy twice from the CF--once to each hard drive. And it's for exactly the reason you mention. It makes sure that I get two copies of what's on the CF card. It's a remote probability that this would make any difference, but hey, when you're going to do 2 copies and all else is equal, this way seemed better.
James, it looks like you've ditched the FW800 as your primary Aperture source workflow you were originally going with. No?
Where are you keeping your laptop? At a friend's booth? On your back with occasional pit stops to download?
I see you're copying twice from your CF cards instead of CF to HD1, then HD1 to HD2. Is this correct? If so, it seems like a smart move in case the copy from CF to HD1 gets botched, you won't have a repeat. Seems safer I guess.
Once again, good info here. Thanks, man.