My photographic workflow - A case study

INTRODUCTION

Patricia Minicucci has made a very interesting suggestion: That we share our photographic workflow explaining the secrets of our work (or at least those that can be publicly told).

I have accepted the challenge. Here you'll find a case study. It is my workflow for a commission received in mid february from a Spanish travel magazine: Paisajes desde el tren (in English "Landscapes from the train") the monthly magazine offered to the clients of the national railway company, RENFE.

They wanted me to write an article (illustrated with my photos) on the castles seen from the fast train plying the Madrid-Seville fast train route. It was to be published in the April issue (the second most circularized of the year) which happened to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first Spanish fast train, - the same railway rout I was writing about-. They wanted, as well, to the extent that it was possible, that I include people in the photos in a prominent way. This is an editorial principle of the magazine.

I should mention that the article was hounoured to be given the main editorial position and the cover photo. This is something I am quite proud of.

See below the cover of the magazine with my photo

Since I wanted to maximize the number of photos and castles photographed per day in order to minimize costs (which were fully on me since I was paid a lumpsum for the article and photos) I had to plan well ahead. The route was some 600 kms but the number of castles was considerable (some 30 or so) plus important cities in the route such as Ciudad Real, Cordoba and Seville, all of them  fast train stops. My plan was to sleep in Ciudad Real Friday night and in Córdoba, Saturday night, driving back to Madrid direct from Seville on Sunday evening, once the photos had been taken.

The equipment I was to carry with me -for speed of post processing- was my Nikon D-200 camera and my laptop PC (to be able to make the evening selection of acceptable photos and transfer them from the cards -one 2 gb and one 1 gb).

Lenses were: F-S Nikkor 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5 G ED; Tokina SD 12-24 F4 (IF) DX; AF Micro Nikkor 60mm 1:2.8 D; Tokina AT-X 80-400mm 1:4.5-5.6.

Accesories were tripod, UV and B+W polarizing filters for each lens, MB-D200 multi battery pack and SB-600 flash. All in a Lowepro Photo trekker Classic backpack.

On February 23rd, Friday, at 07:30 AM (still pitch dark) I left home in Madrid, direction Toledo. I wanted to capture the wonderful dawn light. Unfortunatley those early photos were not selected by the magazine. The first they chose was taken at 11:02. That first day I took a total of  132 photos of 11 different locations.

Saturday, I took 150 photos of different 5 locations

Sunday, the total number of shots were 103 of 5 different locations.

Finally, on March 7th amply respecting the closing date,I submitted 44 photos to them, all duly post processed. One was already identified and proposed as the cover photo. All photos were delivered in .TIFF format at 300 ppp with pixels dimensions of  4961 x 3334 (horizontal) and 3307 x 2362 (vertical). These dimensions were the real dimensions of a full page photo in vertical or a double page photo in horizontal.

Publisher's decission on material submitted

They chose 7 plus the cover publishing a total of 7 pages not counting the ads pages inserted in between. At the last minute the advertisement dpt. requested more space for ads resulting in 2 full pages being dropped with 4 photos taken out. Apart from the cover, one photo was a full page (vertical) and another a double page (horizontal). I have to say that I was dissappointed at the photos they chose. A very different selection from the one I would have made.

You can see in the portfolio, all the photos submitted to the magazine in the reverse order that they were taken: The last photo in the portfolio was the first I shot. The 8 photos they chose are the first 8 ones you see in the folder and the very first one is the photo that made the cover.

WORKFLOW OF THE COVER PHOTO

I'm sure that the whole detailed process explained below will interest all of you.

Magazine cover- AVE fast train approaching the tunnel thru the Almodovar del Río Castle's hill (Córdoba)

Lens 18-70mm set at 24mm (equivalent to 36mm in 35mm film) ISO 100 f 25 at 1/30.

Sunday 25th feb 2007 at 12:29 hrs.

In spite of knowing the timings of the train coming from Seville -towards Córdoba and Madrid-, I waited on a narrow footbridge over the rails for 20 minutes because I wanted to have everything ready and checked well ahead. When the train came it had been lightly raining for some 5 minutes.

Find below the original EXIF of the RAW file. These are the details: White balance: 4950º K -3 tint; Exposure: 0; Light: +50; Contrast: +25; Other values: 0

Magazine cover- 1st step post processing

I wanted a warmer light more similar to the actual light I had.

In PS Camera Raw I changed the following settings: White Balance: 6.500º K Tint +10; Exposure: +0,50; Recover: 50; Fill light: 5: Blacks: 8; Light: +30; Contrast: +45; Vibrance: +30; Saturation: +10.

The image was cropped to fit the space reserved for the image in the cover. An ugly building (a pig's shed) was cloned out.

See attached the result

Magazine cover- 2nd step post processing

In PS CS3 I made a rough selection of the sky keeping the selection within the sky and leaving a band of rougly 0.2 inch from the castle's borders. I opened a new adjustment levels layer (in luminosity mode) working each RGB channel to get a more threatening sky.

Then, always in the selected layer, I applied a Gaussian blur of 75 pixels to smoothen the edges of the selection.

See the final result in the attached file