If you haven’t read the first post, then you might like to do that first….

The most important thing for me is to have access to my daily operations at all times, whether I’m on the road with my iPhone or in the studio on a Mac. I use applications that simplify my life rather than adding more complexity, and I like my software to be elegant with great attention to user interface design.  The attention to detail that some developers are applying to their software is astounding, and this appeals to my sensibilities as a photographer.

The essentials – email, contacts & calendar

Google currently remains my central storage for emails, contacts and my calendar.  Storing this sort of information “in the cloud” means that it’s accessible from anywhere and is easy to synchronise with all the devices that I use. I have many reasons for choosing Google, but one of the most critical features that GMail offers me is the ability to send emails from my various aliases, so emails appear to comes from timothyarmes.com and not gmail.com.

On the iPhone I use the standard email application to receive my mails (although I went through the longer setup sequence to use my GMail aliases), and I synchronise the calendars and contacts using Google Sync. I view my calendars using Calvetica because I’m a sucker for beautifully crafted user interfaces that work like a dream.

On the Mac I now use Sparrow as my email client (here’s hoping that it’ll come to iOS too), and BusySync to synchronise my calendar with iCal.  Contacts are synchronised with the built in address book.

Tasks

I continue to use Remember The Milk for complex task handling where I need to be reminded about things on due dates such as checking up on image licences.  There’s an app for iOS devices and the web interfaces suffices for the desktop.

For general lists however, such as shoot planning, I found that RTM tends to get in the way more than it helps, and this had been true of all the task management alternatives that I’d tried.  Most task management solutions are simply too powerful for 99% of my demands, and actually slow me down in their need for a highly structured approach.

Fortunately I fell upon a great solution called Task Paper. Task Paper is just a list of tasks formatted cleverly – it’s elegant, quick to use, and stays out of the way. It syncs with a companion iPhone app that’s just as pleasant, and it’s a quintessential example the sort of software I prefer to use. HogBay software are offering a big discount until Friday (and that’s what provoked me into writing this post now).

Documents

Dropbox remains my favourite way to synchronise important documents whilst also providing an off-site backup. Lots of applications now use Dropbox to ensure synchronisation of data too, so it’s become even more useful. I also like the way that I can share folders with clients and colleagues.

Other tools

I use a number of other tools to help keep things running smoothly – here’s a quick list

• 1Password – Passwords and other important information are securely stored using 1Password and sync’d across my devices using DropBox. Thanks to this program I no longer have one password for all my logins!
• EchoFon – Keeps me up to date with Twitter and it’s synchronised across all my devices.
• Instapaper – A great place to store things for reading later, whenever you get a chance.
• Flipboard – My favourite iPad application for staying abreast of Facebook, Twitter, my RSS Feeds (via Google Reader), Flickr and general news, all beautifully presented in a magazine format. If support’s added for reading things stored in my Instapaper account then I’ll be in heaven.
• LogMeIn Ignition – Access to my Mac’s screen and files from anywhere (you’ll need the free client too).
• Sunseeker – OK, this isn’t used for staying organised, but it’s such an important tool for photographer’s that I feel compelled to mention it anyway.
• Dialvetica – It’s the minor things that give the most satisfaction

Here are some considerations to take into account when cataloguing with Lightroom.

Multiple Catalogs vs A Single Catalog

Should you create lots of catalogs for your images, or keep them all in one single catalog?

This question doesn’t have a right or wrong answer – you’ll need to consider your needs carefully. I personally use a single catalog for all my images, personal and professional. I do this for a number of reasons:

• A don’t like having to switch between catalogs to find images.
• A single image can be both personal and professional. For example, the gymnast shot uses a background image that I happened to take while on holiday in New York. By having all my images in a single catalog I can maintain an entire reference of material that I can call upon.
• I also use both my personal and professional images when considering shoot locations, so once again it’s useful to have all my images in one place.

There are also good reasons to maintain separate catalogs, such as:

• If you’re working in a team environment, it obviously makes sense to limit the catalog to images have been taken with the context of the organisation.
• If there’s no cross over between the type of photography that you do then it’ll probably be easier to maintain properly organised databases if they’re separated. For example, if you do weddings then it seems sensible to maintain a catalog specifically for this work.

Note however that I don’t subscribe to the idea of photo ‘buckets’, where each catalog can fit onto a CD or DVD – I think that the justification for this has vanished with today’s backup options.

Collections vs Keywords

When should you be using keywords in preference to collections? The choice isn’t necessarily cast in stone, however a well organised library will probably use both keywords and collections. Here are some of the main differences between the two:

• Keywords may be exported as XMP metadata when exporting a file.
• Keywords may be stored as XMP metadata in (or in a sidecar file of) the original file. If the database becomes corrupted, your keywords are still intact.
• Each keyword may have a list of synonyms that are exported with it.
• Keywords may be used as search criteria from the filter bar.
• There are many more ways of applying keywords to a file than there are of placing images in collections. They may be typed into the right-hand keyword pane, applied from the keyword templates, applied using the keyword stamper, or dragged and dropped from the right-hand panel. Keywording is rapid.
• Collections are essentially virtual folders and as such the images in a collection can be ordered.  This will be useful for a slideshow or web gallery. Also, the image flags (flagged, unflagged and rejected) and (optionally) the filter settings are local to each collection.
• Collections can be exported as a catalog, and reimported at a later date. This can be a very powerful feature in some workflows.

From the above it would seem that keywording offers many more advantages than the collections do, but they really serve very different purposes. Keywords are best used to describe images an collections should be used to organise images.

Be wary of the various tutorials on-line that show keywords being used in a hierarchical structure to organise photos. Something like this:

> People
    > Mike
    > Bob
    > Phil

An advantage of using keywords like this is that it would be easy to find photos of people using Lightroom’s filter bar. With collections, you’d need to find the “Bob” collection to locate all the photos of him, which may take more time (albeit only a little more if the collections are well organised).

However you’ll need to be very careful if the photos will ever be supplied to a third party, such as a stock agency or an end client. Given the example above, “Bob” is meaningless to anyone who doesn’t know who Bob is – it certainly should not be applied to a stock image. You could turn off the exportation of this particular keyword, but this would be a fairly painstaking and error prone approach to the problem.

In the above case I think it’s hard to fully appreciate whether to use keywords or collections, but consider instead a collection of images for an exhibition. The advantages of a collection here are more obvious – the ability to order, flag and filter these images is a powerful aid.

You’ll need to consider the fors and againsts for each method, and to use the tool in the way that’s best for you. I would however recommend the following approach:

1. Use collections to group photos that intrinsically belong together, creating sub-collections as needed. Examples include photos of friends and family, all black and white images, photos for a particular client, all photos submitted to a stock collection, all finished fine art prints, works in progress, exhibitions, etc.
2. Don’t create collections for information that’s already provided by the metadata. For example, the IPTC metadata already allows you to store the country, state and location in which a photos was taken, and is conveniently extracted by the metadata browser.
3. Use keywords to describe the image itself, as if you were giving it to a third party. For example, use “cat” but not “freddy”. Stock photographers and journalists will understand this approach well. Since the keywords are exported with the photo as part of the metadata, this makes the photos easy to find and index by those that’ll be using the photo at a later date.
4. Use lots of keywords. The richer your database, the easier it will be to find photos at a later date.
5. Use the hierarchical keywording to increase your efficiency, not to slow it down. For example, you may have a structure such as this:

   > Animal
       > Mammal
           > Cat
           > Dog
           > Fish
           > Shark

   Now when you type “cat”, the implied keywords “Mammal” and “Animal” will be exported automatically.

6. Make good use of synonyms. One obvious way to do this may be to add the plural form to each keyword.
7. Think to the future. If you’re not selling your work today then the choice of keywording or using collections may seem less important to you. If one day you decide to try selling your photos through a stock agency or to an art buyer then you’ll be glad to have correctly keyworded images.

9) Consider using David Rieck’s Controlled Vocabulary to help you keywords your images.

Worklists

I use Eric Scouten’s Worklist approach to keep track of which images still need sorting and keywording. I highly recommend reading his blog post on the subject.

My collection hierarchy

Here then is a screenshot that shows a part of my collection hierarchy:

The top level is divided into three main collections sets: the worklists, my personal work and my professional work. Each of these is further sub-divided, grouping my images into things like web site collections, resources, clients, stock, etc.

For the curious, Building Blocks contains photos that include imagery that may be useful when compositing images, and Scouting Resource contains images that may be useful when searching for shot locations.

There are some great resources on the web to help get a feel for how other photographers are thinking about their promos – some of the best include as Heather Morton’s blog and No Plastic Sleeves.  If you look though these sites you’ll find all matter of interesting portfolios, many of which are the results of some very creative thinking.

I thought I’d contribute my bit by discussing the creation of my new promo card.  My objective isn’t to help you emulate my design – your promo needs be be a reflection of you, not me – but rather to talk you through some of the thoughts and considerations that I had during the design stage. I hope that this may help you to get on the right track for your own creative process.

The goal

First, let’s consider what we’re trying to achieve.  A promo should:

• bring awareness of your existence to new and old clients.
• make them want to visit your site.
• make them want to remember you, preferably by sticking your promo up on their wall with the best of the rest.

But we should be aware that a promo will also:

• form part of your brand – your identity.  Your promo says something about who you are, so it’s in your interest to make that first impression count.
• set expectations – if you have a beautifully produced promo and a shoddy web site the client is likely to feel disappointed when then visit, and that’s not what you want.  Your branding needs to be of consistent quality across the board.

Format choice

With these considerations in mind I started to think about my new promo.

There are some really great promos out there, going from the giant in-your-face wall posters to small boxes filled with interesting goodies.  There’s no doubt that these’ll attract attention and make you stand out from the crowd, but you’ll need to set aside a good sized budget! I also imagine that some clients may be a little put off by the photographer’s care-free attitude to the environment when they receive a giant poster….

This concern is also a valid argument for not sending printed promos at all – email suffices. The problem with email, however, is that it’s so easily ignored. It’s a fine line to tread.

I decided to print a card, but rather than going with the classic post-card style of promo I chose a more unusual format that I would post in an envelope.

When folded the card measures just 10x15cm (good for the mail), and when unfolded completely it’s 42x15cm (A3 in width, A6 in height).  I felt that this long panoramic format had lots of potential, left room for a very large main image (for visual impact), and also matched the panoramic format of my business cards (subtly maintaining my brand).

With the format chosen I started thinking about the graphic design and about the images that I wished to use.

Design considerations

Once again I considered my brand.  My website uses lots of white space to keep it fresh looking; the text is grey and I use a green accent colour (also found on the business cards).  It was important for my brand that I maintain these aspects in the design of the card.

I wanted to choose images that showed various facets of my work, and I took a lot of time choosing images that worked well together and also allowed me to maintain the design considerations listed above – especially with the use of white space to keep it fresh.

Front page – Skate boarder

The front page

When the promo is folded the front page is small, so I needed an image that wouldn’t clutter the design.  I felt that the skate boarder had a certain edginess to it that was appealing – it’s an image that generates good feedback. It also had a great format – thin and vertical – allowing me to use whitespace to give breathing room. Finally, the image itself sends messages to the viewer:

• The backdrop is very French, and France is a very salable location photographically.
• The image is conceptually interesting – I wish to be associated to this sort of imagery.
• It shows that I’m quite happy to be taking images in a town center – I don’t wish to get type-cast as a photographer of the great ourdoors, which may be a risk with active lifestyle photography.

Inside double-spread – Acrobat

Double page spread

For the second image I wanted something dynamic, and the acrobat was a perfect choice due to its blown out background and the green grass corner.  Once again the whitespace helps to maintain freshness and brand image, and also leaves room for the text.

Cutting the image in two across the opening of the two pages was an aesthetic decision – I felt it made the design more interesting.

Inside 4-page spread – Swimmer

The center-piece - a wide panoramic

The swimming image from a recent self-promotional shoot was a obvious choice for this promo design. The image is original and has lots of visual impact, its format fits perfectly into the panoramic space and there’s even room for more white space above and below! The colour palette is once again green, and that further helps to pull the branding aspects into the design resulting in a promo card that feels coherent in its design.

I also placed my logo on this page so that my identity wouldn’t be lost if this page where left open on a desk or pinned to a board.

The Text

I kept the text simple and to the point – art buyers are busy people. I considered what the most important things were that I wanted to say:

• What I do (specialised area).
• My nationality and country of residence (since these aren’t the same). It may seem irrelevant to state that I’m British, however these cards will be sent to many anglophone countries and I wouldn’t want to lose potential clients who may concerned about the language barrier when dealing with a photographer in France.
• To ask the viewer to visit my site.

The text is in both English and French since these are the two markets that are most easily accessible to me. I could have had separate promos printed for each language but I felt that this tells the client something else about me, and that’s useful information.

Back page

The back of the promo and that of my business cards

The back page is home to my contact information. The design matches the back of my business cards – branding!

Final thoughts

You may love or hate this design (preferably the former, especially if you’re an art buyer!), but in any case I hope this post will serve its purpose and help you start thinking about your upcoming promo design. A little thought now may help you go a lot further later…

• I aim to deliver images that separate myself from the crowd. Post-processing and retouching thus form a critical string to my bow, allowing me far more self-expression than I can achieve otherwise. I’ve written about this previously.
• I put my images into my portfolio, and these attract the attention of potential clients. When I’m hired, they’re hiring me in part for my ability to deliver the certain style of imagery that I use to promote myself. A good portion of that style is due to this post-processing work.
• The client then asks me to deliver images that have not been retouched – they often prefer to retouch in-house in order to have more creative flexibilty and to keep costs down.

The top image is indicative of my personal style and sets the expectations for the client. However, the bottom image is what the client then specifically asks for...

I hate delivering these un-processed images – I feel like a chef serving raw ingredients to a client’s dinner table.

Although I can generally understand the client’s reasoning I was taken aback not long ago when it was suggested to me that the photographer shouldn’t need to do any retouching – they should be “getting it right in camera”.

What’s scary here is the lack of understanding of the role of today’s commercial photographer. I believe absolutely that we should be getting the image right in camera, but the definition of “right” has evolved with the introduction of wide-spread digital techniques.

Today, the “right” image is one that is a prime candidate for manipulation. It should be well lit, well composed and technically correct – all this goes without saying, but it should be taken with consideration of the post-processing phase.

Here are some examples:

• The final image may need to have a “blown out” look. If the original isn’t blown out I can then choose the level to which to blow it out in post.  If it’s blown in camera I loose that ability.
• The final image may need to be toned. The “in-camera” image should nevertheless have natural coloration – no one expects the photographer to use coloured filters to do this any more!
• By giving a little leeway to the crop when the image is taken the client has for more cropping options available in post than if the image is too tight during the shot. The above image is a good example of this.  Obviously this can’t be taken to the extreme or else they’d be no pixels left!  This is one reason why I prefer high pixel count cameras such as the 5DMkII. The cropped image above still has 8MPixels – more than enough for most uses.

The list goes on, but the principle remains the same – the “right” in-camera image will often look very different to the final result. Moreover, we pre-visualise the final image before and during the shoot and so we’re shooting with the knowledge of how we’re going to be processing.

The running image below is a perfect example of all these considerations.

The original image to the right looks appalling and yet I absolutely got this image "right" in-camera because I was specifically shooting with the final image in mind.

The solution….

How can we address this issue with respect to out clients?  I only have one solution – educate them. Clients who approach us for out photographic style need to understand that post-processing is as important to our craft as the placement of our lights when we press the shutter.

Feel free to point them to this post if you wish…

And yet every time I need to do this I end up tearing my hair out.  Why?  Timezones.

I’m based in France and when dealing with clients abroad I need to find a time that suits both parties.  That should be easy, but typically it’s a frustrating and time-wasting experience. Just yesterday I needed to organise a meeting with an American client who informed me that he was available from 9am to 12am CDT. Converting that to Paris time should be simple.  Right?

Wrong.   On-line world-time converters typically just list a bunch of cities – I haven’t a clue which of the American cities in the list happen to to fall within the timezone that I wish to convert from.  If I want to specify a timezone such as “CT”, or an offset such as GMT+2, or even a whole country (if it isn’t split into different time zones), I can’t.

I got so fed up with the situation that I finally took some time out to search the web for a better solution, and I eventually discovered the best online timezone converter I’ve ever seen. Simple, elegant, ad-free.  The author’s accompanying blog article is an excellent read and epitomises my experiences with alternative solutions.

I realized immediately that this would make a great Mac OS Widget, so with the authors blessing I spent a couple of hours making one.  Feel free to download it and simplify your lives too.

Chase produces very high end – and high budget – photography, and this shows with the gear that the team are using. For example, the two field drives are G-Tech 256GB SSDs, and at $1200 each they’re worth significantly more that the MacBook Pro itself!

Chase knows this though, and he makes a very important statement at the end of the video when he says “everything I say here is scalable, and you need to design your backup solutions for your needs”. Storage and Backup are vital, but the workflow can be scaled up or down based on requirements and budget. There’s no single “right” solution for that’ll work for everyone, but there’ll certainly be a solution that’s right for you.

I thought it might be interesting to describe – with far less grace and without the cool little graphic doodles – the workflow that I use. I hope it’ll prove interesting for other photographers who have comparable budgets to myself. I’ll compare my workflow to Chase’s so that you can see how the key ideas are the same, even if the gear isn’t.

In the field – Key concept: backup multiple copies immediately

In the field Chase ingests his photos into Aperture using a fast firewire compact flash reader and has them copied onto two daisy-chained SSDs. The images are therefore backed up onto each SSD and (I assume) the hard drive of the computer – three copies in total. Since SSDs have no moving parts they are an ideal storage solution when travelling.

I ingest my images using Lightroom (obviously!) and have them backed up to an external 2.5″ rugged hard drive. Once that’s done I then stick my compact flash card into a NextoDi backup device. This little gadget copies the photos off the card extremely quickly and performs a hardware verification of the data. The end result is that I also have three backups.

Chase’s SSDs look fantastic, but my rugged hard drive is much cheaper. It’s also very small and light; for my work size and space are of paramount importance, especially when trying to fit everything into a rucksack. Although there’s more risk of mechanical failure with a traditional harddrive that with an SSD it’s still slight and with 3 backups I’m secure. That said, SSDs will be cheap enough to make them a no-brainer in a few years time.

Why a NextoDi rather than a second exernal hard drive on my MacBook Pro? Well, if the MacBook Pro breaks down, crashes, smashes, bursts into flames or simply runs out of power I can continue to backup my work. In fact I think that this feature is so important that I’ll undoubtedly invest in a second NextoDi in order to ensure that I can continue to back up 2 copies if the laptop fails – never be afraid to evolve your workflow.

Also worthy of note is that my external hard drive is partitioned, and a SuperDuper’d copy of the MacBook pro has been placed on one of the partitions. If the Macbook Pro’s hard drive fails I can boot from this and continue to work.

Base Camp – Key concept: back up your work in progress

Back at base camp Chase copies his field drive to a G-Tech 2TB G-Safe. A lovely piece of kit. With one copy procedure he gets two backups (thanks to the RAID setup), each of which shares a room with a different person on the team.

I think that different photographers will have different needs when it comes to making backups at base camp. Personally I use fields drives that are big enough to hold the data for the entire shoot, so I don’t need to make any further copies. Once again the idea is to travel light. For very big shoots I can certainly understand Chase’s approach however.

If working with an assistant then separating the drives is definitely worthwhile – the biggest risk being an opportunist thief.

The Studio – Key concept: backup, backup, backup.

In an environment such as Chase’s, where there’s an entire team of people working at the studio, a central server is an absolutely requirement. But many photographers, including myself, work alone from either a home studio or a small office – in this case we can limit our expenditure whilst still protecting our work.

I use a powerful Mac Pro with a 30″ NEC Spectraview as my central workstation. A fast computer is essential when working with the large files such as those generated by a 5D Mk II. In terms of data storage, it’s set up in a particular way:

• Data is stored internally on 3 “enterprise level” 2TB hard drives in a striped RAID (very fast data transfer, but if one fails everything’s lost). I don’t physically separate RAW files from “Live work” but I do work non-destructively, so the RAWs never get modified.
• The boot drive is an SSD and doesn’t contain any photographic data, but it does contain most other things (accounts, emails, etc).
• A 4th internal hard drive (actually the machine’s original boot drive) is used as a Time Machine back for the boot drive. Time Machine’s great.

The 3 2TB hard drives form a single data partition, and every night this partition is SuperDuper’d to a partition on an external Drobo while I’m tucked up in bed. The same is true of the boot drive.

Note than when I get back to the studio after a shoot the images from one of the field drives are copied to the Mac Pro, but the field drives aren’t emptied until this data had been backed up over night. Typically, they aren’t emptied until the next shoot, just as an extra safeguard.

For those that are interested in maximising the performance of their Mac for photography I highly recommend reading the Mac Performance Guide by Lloyd Chambers. Chamber’s explains how he configures his data drive on a Mac Pro, and also the reasons behind the the stripped RAID that I’ve adopted.

At this stage I have my data backed up twice – once internally and once on the Drobo. This does not suffice. As Chase also states an off-site backup is an absolute necessity. You must protect your data from fire, theft, flooding or any of the other unpleasant things that might happen to you. I keep my data backed up on an external hard drive at a friends house, and I keep his at my studio.

So I’ll leave you with my last words of wisdom – “3 backups, one off site. No less.”

1. Chase – how did you do those cool little graphic animations?

Fact 2: One of the frustrating things about photography is that that there are so many types of photography to explore.  It can be quite overwhelming for those coming into our world.

For those contemplating professional photography as a career then the good news is that somewhere in this gargantuan gulf of photographic endeavours there’ll certainly be something that’s right for you.  Whether you’re introvert or extrovert, a recluse or a team player, an image taker or an image maker, an artist or a technician, there’ll be a branch of photography which will suit your personality.

For example, as a professional fine-art wildlife photographer you’ll be spending hours waiting patiently for that perfect moment and then selling your images as pieces of art, whereas a traditional wedding photographer may need to deal with difficult mother-in-laws and control crowds of slightly merry people while managing the technicalities of his or her flash.

The vital thing is that you choose a form of photography that’s right for you.

I’m commercial/advertising photographer specialising in active lifestyle images, very often sports or outdoor oriented imagery, and I love my work. Commercial photography imposes its own requirements on the type of personality that’s best suited to this career, so  I thought I’d present my own reasons for choosing this path – it may well help some of you to go in either the same direction, or else strike it off your list and look at the many other options available to you.

Create, not take

I love to create images – to put all the pieces together to form a compelling photo that will provoke a response in the viewer.  I enjoy composing the image, placing the talent and perfecting the lighting.

Carrying my camera around at all times in case I see something enticing just isn’t my thing – I know this through experience.  I’m also uncomfortable taking images of people who haven’t chosen to be in front of the camera.  So travel photography, journalism and other such pursuits simply aren’t well suited to my personality.

A creative outlet

Creating images is great fun, but being creative gives the greatest rush.

Commercial photography offers plenty of room to express yourself as a photographer; most shoots offer opportunities to be creative.  Sometimes the client involves the photographer in the early stages of a concept, other times the brief is specific but there’ll be opportunities to express yourself on location once the required images are in the bag.

And of course you can do anything you like when creating images for self-promotion….

Personal interaction

Comercial photography requires a lot of interaction with a large variety of people – clients, art directors, models, make-up artists, stylists, assistants, etc.  It isn’t a job for the introverted, (although you certainly don’t need to be an extrovert to succeed), but you need to enjoy the human contact.

Variation

My job is incredibly variable.  My activities include self-marketing and prospection, client meetings, brain-storming sessions, production and logistics, photography, post-processing and retouching, accountancy, paper work, chasing up clients, maintaining my web site, keeping up to date with the latest technology and techniques, updating this blog, etc etc.

I really enjoy variation in my life, but I appreciate that this constant juggling act isn’t for everyone.  In particular you should know that actually taking pictures is but a small proportion of all the above.

The technical stuff

All forms or photography require a certain degree of technical competency. Commercial photography requires a particularly high level of understanding if you wish to avoid being limited in your ability to create images.

The geek in me loves this stuff.

Finally, the challenge…

Many good amateur photographers have told me that they couldn’t become professional because they like to take their own images rather than being “dictated” to by a client, to which I’ll quickly retort that it’s perfectly possible to take and sell your own images professionally – fine art or stock photographers do this all the time.

That said, in my case I adore the challenge of accepting a client’s brief and exceeding his or her expectations.

Of course I do get plenty of opportunities to create my own imagery for self-promotion.  It’s the best of both worlds.

In my last blog post I talked about my new plug-in, PLUS for Lightroom, that’s used to embed licensing rights information into the XMP meta-data of an image.  I received a couple of questions about XMP so I thought I’d explain the basics of meta-data for the benefit of those who are just starting to get to grips with the digital workflow.

Meta-Data

Meta-data is just data about data.  Information about information.

Huh?

A concrete example may help.  If the data is a photo, then the meta-data will include information about that photo, such as the time it was taken, the photographer, the shutter speed and aperture, etc.  This meta-data isn’t part of the captured image itself, but it’s information about that image. Conceptually, it’s as simple as that.

The usefulness of meta-data becomes apparent when the photographer starts to appreciate the importance of a good workflow, and it becomes essential knowledge when photographs are passed between different people in a professional situation.  As a very basic example, a photographer will wish to ensure that a copyright line is carried with each of his or her images.

Meta-data can be stored in a variety of places. If you write down some notes about your photo and stick them on a pile on your desk, that’s meta-data. Obviously that would be far from ideal though.  A better solution is to use a computer to help us with this task, and there are tools designed for photographers, such as Lightroom, Photo Mechanic or Aperture that are designed to do just that. These programs usually maintain a database in which meta-data about each photo (such as a description, it’s location on the hard drive and a 5 star rating) is stored.  Since the metadata is centralised into one database it’s very quick to run searches and filters, and to do other cool things that will help your workflow.

There’s another option for meta-data storage too.  The meta-data can be embedded inside the file with which it’s associated, which is to say that it’s stored inside the file (the JPEG, TIFF, etc) in such a way that it can be retrieved by a capable application.  This method has the advantage that the meta-data is actually attached to the file, so if the file moves or gets sent somewhere by email, then the meta-data will travel with it.  The disadvantage of this approach is that it’s less efficient if you need to do a search; if the computer needs to open every file to read its meta-data then this would slow down meta-data searches significantly. For photos stored elsewhere (such as those archived on a CD), then you would be required to insert the CD just to complete your search request.

In reality we use a combination of approaches.  Some meta-data is stored in the file, and some within the database software.  Most often however, the same data is stored in both places, so that searches are efficient whilst important information is guaranteed to be kept securely with the file itself.

EXIF & IPTC

The terms EXIF and IPTC refers to two different and complimentary meta-data standards.

EXIF, stands for Exchangeable Image File data.  It’s a standard for storing information concerning the camera’s settings at the moment the picture was taken.  The EXIF meta-data contains things such as the shutter speed, aperture, flash settings, exposure compensation, focus point, colour space, focal length, time and date, etc.  The camera stores this meta-data with every picture that you take.

The IPTC is the International Press Telecommunications Council. In 1970 the IPTC defined a standard for meta-data that was designed for improving the digital workflow within the press world. IPTC meta-data contains information that is added to a photo by photographers and editors, such as the copyright information, image descriptions, descriptive keywords, etc.  Over time the standard has evolved, and there are a host of possible fields that may be filled in depending on the needs of the organisations involved.

Both of these standards have had to evolve over time, and this hasn’t been a straight-forward task.

The IPTC standard started life as a text-based standard for news related articles and gradually expanded to meet the needs of television and radio industries.  It wasn’t until 1994 that Adobe would include the ability to store IPTC data (or “IPTC headers”) into its digital image file formats. These traditional IPTC headers  are no longer appropriate for modern usage. Lacking proper support for non-English characters (even accented characters are not well supported) foreign languages may be impossible to incorporate.  Furthermore, the standards defining the location of the headers inside various file formats aren’t as strict as they should be.  You may be able to read the headers in one application but not another. The CrossIPTC tool is an example of a tool that attempts to convert IPTC data for use between platforms.

EXIF meta-data has it’s own problems.  While there are a lot of standardised fields, camera makers have also added their own proprietary information.  Since this information and the way in which it’s stored changes from one make to another, imaging applications may not be able to read and display all of it.  Worse still, saving a modified version of a file may result in a loss or corruption of this data, since the application isn’t even aware that it’s there.

XMP

With all this past experience came the opportunity to create a new all-encompassing meta-data standard.  Creating a new standard is a hard thing to do – people don’t like change.  To create a new standard requires a huge amount of time, money and drive.  It also requires the support of the industry. In 2001  Adobe stepped up to the challenge and created XMP.

XMP, the Extensible Meta-data Platform, provides a standard for storing meta-data, any meta-data, with the associated document. Adobe used their weight within the industry to gradually push XMP to the forefront.  All of the Adobe Creative Suite products provide support for XMP meta-data, giving virtually every digital imaging professional the ability to work with XMP.

Structured upon open standards that have been proved (XML), the data is stored in such a way that any of the world’s languages may be used in any text.  The standard is well defined and completely open, so it’s possible for all developers to write conforming applications.

XMP is, by definition, extensible.  If an organisation needs to store a piece of meta-data in its files that isn’t defined in the standard, then this information can be added to the XMP meta-data such that can be read and written by XMP aware imaging applications¹.  The applications don’t need to be changed to cope with the addition, and there shouldn’t be any way in which two proprietary meta-data blocks can be confused with each other.

Finally, one of XMP’s greatest strengths is that it defines how this information is stored in a particular file type. For file types that don’t support meta-data inclusion, XMP meta-data can still be stored in an associated file (known as a sidecar file) which should be moved and copied with the original.

Structurally, XMP is based around schemas.  A schema is simply a collection of related data, and there are standardised XMP schemas for the most common types of meta-data.  This brings the advantages of XMP to the well known meta-data standards that are used throughout the world today.  For example, there are schemas for both EXIF and IPTC, providing a robust system for including these standards, and giving the them freedom to develop.

It’s thanks to the extensibility of XMP that the PLUS coalition have been able to develop the PLUS standard for embedding usage rights information into image files.

Multiple Meta-Data

You may be wondering what happens if you include XMP meta-data in a file that already contains traditionally encoded IPTC and EXIF data.

It’s a great question and the answer is that it depends on your application.  If you’re running an older application that isn’t XMP aware, then it’ll just read the old IPTC and EXIF data as usual.  A newer application may see the XMP, and use only that, assuming that it overrides any older forms of meta-data, or it may offer you access to everything.

When images are saved newer applications may convert the IPTC and EXIF data into the new XMP schemas. The application may also try to simultaneously write the meta-data in the old format so that older applications can read it, however there are limitations to this approach.  Over time the old formats will be dropped and only XMP will be supported, removing all ambiguity.

XMP is a great creation.  Embrace it!

1. Within Photoshop, it’s even possible to design custom panels that will be displayed in the File Info box along with the other XML meta-data. Adobe supply document that explain how this is done.

Food photography presents many small problems that keep the grey matter on its toes. Experimenting with new techniques and keeping them fresh help keep the mind open and aware during all photos shoots.

Should a professional photographer limit his or her photography to just one or two specialist areas, or is it better to be a generalist?

I know a local photographer who has had a very successful career as a generalist. He’s been successful for two reasons: firstly, he’s a very good generalist photographer who is able to adapt himself easily and secondly, he runs his business through a shop that is easily accessible to the general public. He’s also an extremely likable and chatty character who inspires confidence and who has gained an excellent reputation in the local area.

The ability to work with confidence in interior environments is critical to my professional work. Although my images usually involve people, I still need to be able to light the environment appropriately.

Nevertheless, as a general rule I believe that most businesses are far more likely to shine when they do one thing exceedingly well rather than many things reasonably well. Restaurants are an excellent example of this principle; our expectations are far higher of restaurants that offers one type of food. A restaurant that offers everything from an Indian curry to a Sunday roast may be okay – but it’ll never be exceptional.

If your web site has portfolios for weddings, still life, studio, architecture and fashion then what sort of message are you giving to your potential clients? Unless your work is undeniably top-notch across the board¹  you’ll be sending a confusing one at best, and an amateurish one at worse. It’s important to ask yourself if you’ll be taken seriously.

Being confortable in the studio is also important to me. Maintaining the skill set required to tackle more challenging materials such as glassware opens up a world of possibilities for my work - especially when it comes to compositiing images...

Despite this I do actually believe that a great specialist photographer should also be a good generalist. It’s important to vary photographic experiences in order to maintain and attain skills and techniques. Having a good repertoire of skills to call upon is essential, and calling upon them with the confidence that only comes through regular practice will undoubtedly have a positive effect on ones specialist photography, allowing the photographer to constantly advance and avoid creative or technical stagnation. For this reason it’s very important for me, personally, to have personal projects that I undertake for no other reason that personal satisfaction and growth.

Can the need to maintain a specialised professional portfolio be reconciled with the more eclectic work that I’ve just mentioned? Should a photographer avoid showing his or her work outside of the specialist area?

The answers to these questions are “yes” and “probably not”.  Personal work often provides a view into the photographer’s soul that isn’t visible through the commercial work; it would be a shame to hide this, and very possibly counter productive.  However, the distinction should be very clear and the professional portfolio itself should be focussed and unambiguous so that it sends a clear message to clients. Other work should be presented separately – there are several ways of acheiving this:

• Separate commercial and personal work on your site.
• Place non-specialist work into a blog or other non-formal presentation that can’t be confused with the professional portfolio.
• Place personal work onto a totally separate site.

Macro photography isn't my speciality, but it has been useful to me in the past. Maintaing this skill is not only personally rewarding, it can be useful at the most unexpected times..

My own site has evolved through experience and with the benefit of advice kindly shared other professionals² – I hope that this post will do the same for some of you….

1. If you really excel at several forms of photography then it’s probably worth having a separate site for each one.
2. I attained a wealth of great advice from Chase Jarvis during a workshop for pro-photographers – thanks Chase!

All this has now changed. For the past few months I’ve been exceptionally well organised thanks to many services and technologies that have come to fruition, and these services are improving all the time. I hope that others my benefit from my tenacity in making this all work for me…

The major player in my newly organised life is Google. Google’s technologies are simply excellent for a number of reasons:

• They are very well thought out
• They have great user interfaces
• They are free of charge
• They are accessible from anywhere
• Most importantly, they are open.

Openness is an essential part of the Google philosophy; whereas many companies have previously tried to lock users into their system by using proprietary data formats and by limiting exportation of data, Google’s sensible “the data belongs to the user” approach, whereby the user can easily get their data out of Google, is one of the major reasons that so many people want use it!  Ironic, isn’t it?

I use Google as the synchronisation hub for nearly all my organisational needs.  GMail is my email service and also the central repository for all my contact information, Google Calendar is used to organise my schedule, Google Documents allow me access to information that I’ll need on the road, and I use Google Reader for reading my (long) RSS list. This is all well and good, but its the combination of Google with other technologies that makes this system work so well, so I’ll discuss each of them in turn in a moment.

The other key in my organisational arsenal is my iPhone. Having the internet, email, contact and calendars up to date and in my pocket the whole time is absolutely essential to the success of this system.

Email

In my opinion GMail is the best on-line email client there is. There are a couple of missing features (such graphical signatures) but these disadvantages are outweighed easily.  There are two killer features: the first is the unparalleled grouping of messages into conversations, and the second is the ability to send emails as if they came from external addresses. I have several email addresses that all feed into GMail (where they are labelled automatically), and when I respond the reply will be seen to come from that email address, and not my gmail.com address. This not only looks more professional, it also allows me to dissociate myself from GMail should I decide not to use the service in the future.

Obviously I can access my Gmail account from the iPhone. Since I wish to send emails from my own domain and not from the gmail.com address I used the iPhone’s ability to access GMail as a generic IMAP email server rather than using the built in GMail option.

Back on the Mac the obvious disadvantage of using a web based email client is that you don’t get handy message arrival notifications and you can’t drag and drop attachments onto the interface. One solution to is use Apple Mail to access the GMail account via IMAP¹, however you then lose the advantages of the GMail interface (better conversation grouping, labels, stars, archiving, spam reporting, etc). Fortunately there’s a fantastic solution to the problem – Mailplane. My biggest fear is that this app stops being sold….

Contacts

Until recently Google’s treatment of contacts was abysmal in that everyone that you ever replied to would be added to your contact list. In my case, since I reply to many support requests everyday, I had an enormous list of contacts that I didn’t personally know. Using Google as the central database for my contacts was out of the question.

This has all changed now. Google still stores all contacts (which does have advantages), but a subset of those can be manually moved into the “My Contact” list, and other lists can also be created. The “My Contacts” list is my central contact database, and this is synchronized with my iPhone using Google Sync Services.   Instantaneous over-the-air syncing is great – I rarely sync my iPhone with iTunes nowadays.  The only missing feature is the inability to synchronise groups other than the “My Contacts” list – I’m hoping that that’ll come soon.

I don’t personally synchronise my contacts with my Mac because I use Mailplane as the email client, but this is apparently possible.

Calendars

The Google Calender is a great example of using the web for collaborative purposes. All my calendars are hosted by Google, and it’s the same for my wife. I can see hers and she can see mine. It’s fab. Once again the calendars are synchronised to the iPhone using Google Sync Services. There used to be an annoying limitation of 5 synchonised calendars but this has now been lifted to 25 so the issue has become moot.

Note that Google Sync Services acts as an Exchange server to do its magic.  Since the iPhone can only connect to one Exchange account this would be a problem for those who already use one. The iPhone 3.0 software now allows you to subscribe to CalDav services (such as Google Calendar), so you can now continue to use Exchange and access the Google Calendars using CalDav. It doesn’t solve the problem of synchronising Google contacts however….

On the Mac I prefer to use iCal, and thanks to the excellent BusySync application I can synchronise my Google calendars with iCal.  BusySync is a very comprehensive and flexible calendar synchonisation solution for the Mac.  Another solution is the SpanningSync, but I don’t like this as much since is relies on access to their servers.

Tasks (To-dos)

Google has tasks, but for the moment I’m not keen on the implementation. Instead, I rely on the Remember the Milk service. My tasks are hosted there, and are synchronised with my iPhone in two ways:

• I use their iPhone Application to enter my tasks.  (I hope that they introduce push notifications soon).
• Tasks with due dates are subscribed to as a read only calendar (iPhone 3.0 software needed)

I tend to forget tasks easily if I don’t see them every day.  Again, Remember The Milk comes to the rescue with a GMail gadget that displays the tasks in the sidebar on the left.  I then use the Google Labs gadget that shifts the labels to the right hand side so that I don’t run out of vertical space.  Note that Remember The Milk also offer a firefox plugin, but since I want to see my tasks in GMail using Mailplane, I don’t use it.

I also Remember The Milk’s iGoogle gadget (more about iGoogle later….)

Finally, I subscribe to the tasks list from Google Calendar too.

Documents

Google Documents allow me to create and share simple documents, presentations and spreadsheets, and to access and edit them anywhere.  There’s no need to have appropriate editing software (such as Excel) installed on the machine. This is great for collaborative stuff.

When I wish to have full time access to native format documents (such as Excel spreadsheets) I use Dropbox. Dropbox allows me to maintain a centralised archive of documents and then have them automatically synchronised between any machines that I install the software on.  I can even read the docs on the iPhone.

RSS

By using Google Reader to read my RSS feeds I can, once again,  read and stay synchronised everywhere.  On my iPhone I use the Byline application to stay synchonised with Google Reader.

Bookmarks

Bookmark syncing is handled by XMarks.  This service allows me to synchonise my bookmarks between Firefox and Safari (and thus my iPhone) and also allows me to access my bookmarks directly from their site when I’m on another machine.

iGoogle

iGoogle is a customisable home page for Google, and I think it’s very underrated.  I use this as my home page, and it gives me a one page overview of my calendar, tasks (thanks to the above mentioned gadget), RSS feeds, etc.  I highly recommend it.

Twitter & Facebook

I stay in touch socially using Twitter and Facebook.  I’d never really used these services much before, but the iPhone changes everything…

A note about MobileMe

MobileMe may well be a great option for many Mac uses, and if offers some great services.  If I could pick and choose then I’d probably use it, however I don’t want to pay for a ton of stuff that I’ll never use.  GMail is a much better email web client, Bookmark syncing doesn’t work with Firefox, Back to my Mac is handled free by LogMeIn, and the free DropBox is better than iDisk in many ways.  If I could just pay for “Find my iPhone” I’d do that.

Summary

The above technologies work for me because my data is always readily accessible and always up to date.  Once set up it’s as smooth as silk and has been very reliable.  I’m sure that there are other options worth mention, and you can leave your thoughts in the comments.

1. IMAP allows email to be synchronised across all clients. For example, if I read or delete a mail on my iPhone it’ll be seen as read or deleted on the server or by any other client that I use. This is in sharp contrast to the utterly useless POP protocol.

The comments that he received show that there are clearly groups of people who sit firmly on each side of the fence. The post generated a plethora of differing reactions from both readers and other photographer-bloggers such as Vincent Laforet and, of course, John Harrington.

Even fellow plugin-writer Jeffrey Friedl decided to rant about the rants.

I have nothing new or revolutionary to say on the subject; I feel that all the arguments, both for and against, have now been laid bear.

However I would like to react to the many people that responded with the suggestion that working for free is a good way to get a “foot in the door”. I personally don’t think it is such a good idea, so I thought I’d mention I technique that I’ve used to get my own foot in the door that isn’t so much about working for free as much as potentially working for nothing.

I recently approached a potential client that was completing a revamp of their interior. It was a job that interested me but I didn’t have anything in my portfolio that I could use to approach them with. Instead, I showed them what I do, remained enthusiastic about their project, and asked them for the opportunity to do the shoot. If they liked the images then they would pay me my usual fee – and if they didn’t then that’d be fine too, but in this case they wouldn’t be able to use the photos.

The technique worked and they paid me for my work. They even called me back a month later to do some more.

My point though is that I didn’t have to sell my soul to get a foot in the door – they didn’t have to pay me but then they couldn’t have the images. I’d have worked for nothing, but I wouldn’t have worked for free, and I wouldn’t have implanted the idea that I was a free photographer or that I don’t value my own work.

Now, before responding to any of this bear in mind that I’m just talking about the concept of working for free to get a foot in the door. There may by plenty of other fully justifyable reasons to work for free, but I’m not commenting on those….

1. Incidentally, being controversial is a great way of gaining an audience. I’ll have to think of something like that.