My workflow has pretty much stayed the same since college.  I’ve made a few tweaks here and there, but for the most part we were given a pretty solid plan of attack!  Ever since upgrading to my Nikon d810, I now shoot with both an SD & CF card (side note, LOVE my CF cards…. they’re so big and I feel like they’re indestructible!).  After a session (and after clicking through the photos on the back of my camera way too many times, haha!), I pop my SD card into my card reader (Lexar USB 3.0) to view them on the big screen…. and this is what happens next:

1. I create a folder on my desktop with the couples last name and the year.  Within that folder I make three separate folders entitled “RAW” “JPEG” and “FINAL.” I’ve always shot in both RAW and JPEG normal….RAW + JPEGS are set to my SD card and my CF gets all of my backup JPEGS!
2. I open up Adobe Bridge and load up all of my files and export them straight to my desktop subfolders.  In college I used to cull in Adobe Bridge, but that’s only because back then I refused to use Lightroom (which is where I cull now).  Crazy, right?  I used to pull each individual image into Photoshop. Why?  Couldn’t tell you. Live and learn, haha!
3. I open up Lightroom and pull all of the images in from my RAW subfolder.  From there I cull through each image by giving the ones that I love a 5 star rating (control 5 on a Mac).  From there, I go to the bottom right hand of the screen where it says “filters off” and drop down to select “rated” so that I only see the images with a 5 star rating.  Then I edit all of those images!
4. When I’m finished editing, I select all of the images in the “rated” category (control A on a Mac) and export them to the “FINAL” subfolder.
5. Next, I drag and drop the images in my “FINAL” subfolder and create an online Pass gallery.  If you haven’t used Pass before, check it out!  It’s been a total game changer for me!  Pass lets me create an online gallery of images for my clients to print, download, and share as they please.  No more USB drives — I love it!
6. My last step is to back up all of my files onto an external hard drive.  I’ll copy and paste both the main and sub folders onto my external hard drive just to be sure that I have everything that I need and that it’s in two different places.  I always do this before I clear my cards!

So I realize that this wasn’t exactly the most exciting blog post in the entire world, but hopefully it was somewhat helpful, haha! Comment below if you have any questions for me 🙂

XOXO