Words to Lyrics Ben Ho's observations from the cloud

This is the second post about my photo processes. The first one was about where I put my photos. This post is about the work flow from camera to computer.

There are many different methods of getting photos from the camera to the computer, and then to libraries and backup systems. I’m based on the Mac, so this will be slightly different to that on a Windows based computer.

When I finish a shoot, I import all the photos into Aperture. It provides a lot of powerful tools to organise, tag and edit photos. The editing is quite basic, compared to Photoshop. I don’t own Photoshop yet.

Now, before I continue, I’d like to outline my philosophies for choice of software. If the operating system has a functionality that I need to use, I adapt my work flow to the constraints of that program.

All my photos are sorted (filed to delete, keep, export etc.) in Aperture. If there are any photos I want to export to Flickr, I use a plugin to do so. If the photos are “personal”, then the final collection of photos is moved into iPhoto. If the photos are of a concert, or “non-personal” they are exported as JPEGs onto an external hard drive, and the full Aperture project exported onto a separate external hard drive.

My Aperture library is not backed up by Time Machine, my iPhoto library is backed up.

The memory cards are erased by Disk Utility, and used with the next project.

This work flow will change when I get new hardware, which includes a custom built Linux based file server. Currently it works quite well for me, and I haven’t had too many problems with lost data, because I know where everything is at any time.

I’ve got a few posts lined up explaining my current processes for the post-production and publishing of my photos. This first post is about publishing to web, the next one will be about organization after shooting an event.

I don’t like Facebook’s photo facility. It’s optimised to serve junk. I think that there are so many bad photos there, in terms of quality. Sure, many of them tell stories about people’s musings over the weekends, but thinking about it, it is mainly junk.

Let me give you a quick rundown on how Facebook serves photos. They optimise every photo that comes in for web use, scrubbing out EXIF and other miscellaneous data. Although they claim that “your photos look their best”, for quality freaks like me, it is far from that. The photos are resized and sent out through content delivery networks (CDNs). CDNs have servers all around the world, and requests for files are directed to the servers which is geographically the closest. More info is in this Facebook blog post.

So instead, I upload all my photos to Flickr. Their system is designed for the sharing and presentation of people’s photos (and pro member’s videos). When I upload there, the photos are served their original quality, with all the EXIF and other information. Flickr also allows geotagging, descriptions, tags and the like. In my opinion, it has a far richer experience than that of Facebook.

Now you might say “Hey Ben! Not everyone is on Flickr, but everyone is on Facebook!”. This is true. I completely agree that Facebook is the fastest way to share information with friends. Flickr is great for others to explore your work. I know that when I host photos on Flickr, I don’t get the intimacy of people’s comments/thoughts/feelings of my photos. However, I do get the “rich” experience I want which includes geotags, view statistics, and soon enough, critical appreciation. I am able to link Flickr photos to Facebook, so I can still show my friends.

To me, hosting photos on Flickr makes more sense. Although it seems like I am distancing myself from the social norm (well, at least the status quo), I think this issue will present itself better in the long term.

Any other thoughts?