Batch Processing Travel Photos
When I walk back into my apartment after a trip, I want to throw everything on the floor and unwind. After unpacking, resuming my usual routine and getting back to real life, it’s easy to forget to review all of those photos that I took. When I first think of all of those images, I begin to dread the work that’s ahead, because it is work: importing, naming, editing, processing, sharing or archiving. But I’ve found, the sooner that I begin this process, the better the outcome.
Photography has become a world-wide activity. Pretty much everyone with a smartphone takes photographs. With social media platforms currently emphasizing images over text content, I’m sharing this process for anyone who is taking photos. It’s particularly useful for those who travel and capture those moments and memories because being away from home exposes us to distractions that can interrupt routines, such as editing photos. And, while I shoot exclusively in RAW, this workflow can be used in any file format, since no camera really takes the images perfectly.
Start Soon
I make it a point to start the process as soon as possible, which is usually within the first 48 hours of getting home. This means getting out the storage media–SD cards or phone–can be done before I put my gear away for storage before the next trip. If I can do it immediately after settling in, that’s the best.
Starting soon also helps your past self. You’re more likely to remember what you were after with each image and where you were. And content is often time-sensitive, especially if you share it online.
Batch Processing
I import all of my images into Adobe Lightroom, which allows me to view multiple images at the same time. I can process and synchronize all the images, copy and paste settings, rename them, and export them to different formats, depending on my needs. If you’re not familiar with Lightroom, I suggest watching a 15 minute introductory video and then starting to integrate it into your process.
When importing, I make a copy from the storage media (SD card) to my hard drive. I add all the metadata and keywords. I quickly look through the film strip and compare the photos in which I took multiple exposures, deleting the bad images or cropping a copy if I want a variation. I change compositions by cropping in exposures, when necessary.
When I have one exposure of each image, I open the Developer tab and choose the camera and lens profile I shot with, and synchronize those across all exposures that have a shared setting. (Most of the time, I used one camera for an entire trip. I may have multiple lenses and lens profiles to select.) If you used just one camera and one lens for a trip, that would mean synchronizing all the images. Then I’d look at any images that are back-lit, and Remove Chromatic Aberration, if I have a lens that causes that. Again, synchronize the similar images.
I’d then look at images that were taken outside of “contrasty” situations (i.e. without hard shadows and bright highlights) and I’d add a slight S to the Tonal Curve. Copy (select those parameters and uncheck all others) and Paste that setting across similar exposures.
I’d take this step further by looking at the histogram, adjusting exposures and crushing blacks, dropping any blown out highlights, shifting shadows. Check White Balance and adjust. I’d Copy (select those parameters and uncheck all others) and paste to similar exposures.
Touch Ups
Looking at any images of plants, rocks, textiles, I’d add texture. Any portraits, I’d do a quick spot-heal on faces, remove redeye and blemishes (before doing a full frequency separation in Photoshop), and a slight drop of saturation. Skies, highlights, I’d do a slight exposure burn, bring back some detail and saturation. For any images with little things I don’t want in the picture, maybe a tree branch in the border, or a phantom foot in the frame, I’d do a Healing Brush or Clone Stamp.
File Naming and Formats
Tiff files are the archiving standard. They are loss-less and non-proprietary. You’ll be able to open, edit, export and save .tiff files in the decades to come. None of the cameras I’ve used or owned in the last two decades have shot tiff files, so it’s necessary to save or export images into this archival format.
When exporting from Lightroom, rename images. There’s nothing worse than a hard drive or folding filled with files called DSCxxxxx.jpg. Not only does the default naming system make text searches on your computer impossible, the numbering reflects your camera’s actuations, not which number of photos you took on a trip. Export as .tif. Make another export of .jpg if you plan to share on social. Then delete the proprietary raw formats. Then re-import the .tif files to your library to have them easily viewable.
Stay Organized
Having a structure for photos is really important. And no, just dumping all your images on a cloud storage like Apple’s iCloud or Google Photos isn’t a sufficient archival scheme. The reason is that archiving is not just about things in a safe place, it’s also about putting things in a place where you can find it, access it, draw information from it, and, ideally, the structure is interpretable by someone else, if necessary. The fact that we’ve all stood next to someone as they scrolled through their phone in an attempt to find an image, and seconds feel like minutes and you’re asking yourself how to get out of this situation and your friend is juggling the question of where the image is and how soon he should give up, proves that the cloud alone is not a sufficient mode of archive.
Physically speaking, simply putting images on a hard drive is also a bad idea. Hard drives die. It’s necessary to at least have a mirrored RAID for each disc you have as an archival storage device.
Redundant cloud storage is a good idea, but it’s only ⅓ of the puzzle. Cloud storage, unfortunately, doesn’t really support truly archival images–tiff–in a convenient way. Many cloud systems don’t render .tif files very quickly for previewing the image. Uploading and downloading errors can occur.
The combination of a RAID array and cloud storage means you have both formats for redundancy, accessibility while you’re away and the full convenience, speed and rendered previews when you’re at home.
Digitally speaking, organizing images into a folder from trips based on a date is better than based on a theme. Rather than relying on an operating system or a software to organize my images for me, I use the format yearMonthDaterange_Location. This way, it doesn’t matter if a company kills a software or if I switch operating systems, everything is in the same place as before, and anyone can also find the content.
Conclusion
It’s been rewarding to see the world fall in love with images. The multitudes of new minds making use of imaging technology has exploded our understanding of what images can do and mean. Images of travel and personal experiences are fun to look back on; they are a form of time travel. The internet and social media has provided a place to share our images with other people and to communicate visually about the world and our lives.
At the same time, I think that there’s something arbitrary about photography functioning as a mode of memory collection and something that may even be misleading about it. Taking photos can become ritualistic, a reflex, even, like a benediction. The result of this form of photography is a plethora of food photos that express your enthusiasm rooted in gratitude before your meal, like saying grace, but with your smartphone. And your travel partner is sitting at the other side of the table, looking at you, wondering whether to resume the conversation. Instead, I find using images to find the unexpected beauty, the unseen movements, the tragic poetry on a person’s face to enhance my travels.
Images are the only one form of memory. Smells, sounds, conversations and people you meet are also important. The connection with a place and the people should–must–occur before your eyes can be opened to find those great images. Connections make the memories fuller and more vibrant. The images benefit. The connections will point you to the good images. And then once you find them, edit them with brutality and expedience.
