##My photography setup

I do almost all of my shooting with a D7000 and the non-stabalized Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. It’s a very light and versitile setup.

My secondary lens is a Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR. It’s a spectacular lens, but less suited to my typical use-case: travel photography.

Both lenses are protected with Hoya filters, a UV Filter for the 17-50mm and a Protector for the 70-300mm. Maintenance and cleaning is done with a Zeiss Lens Cleaning Kit.

For dedicated photo-excursions or for suitcase traveling I carry the entire setup in a Lowepro Fastpack AW 250, which comfortably fits everything. For more adventurous traveling, I usually restrict myself to just one lens and the bare cleaning necessities which fit perfectly into my Case Logic SLR Zoom Holster. I recently added a Capture Pro, which has revolutionized the way I carry my camera while hiking. If this had a dedicated rain-cover, it would be the best thing for photography while hiking since … socks.

Post production is done in Aperture on my MBA.

This setup has served me very well. I would like to add a dedicated macro lens, a monopod and the Nik Collection. You can find a selection of my photos on flickr.

##My workflow

Generally, I tend to either overshoot or undershoot heavily. Undershooting is troublesome and mostly a question of motivation. Overshooting is the lesser evil and not a problem with a rigorous post production workflow.

After a session (which might last for a couple of days, if I’m on a hike for example), I import all new RAWs into Aperture. To conserve precious hard-drive space on my MBA, I usually work with referenced originals, the exception being extended trips without NAS access. On the NAS all originals are stored in RAID1 and are organized in a /year/month/day folder hierarchy.

I let Aperture automatically split the photos into separate projects during import. This generally works as expected and makes it easier to place individual photos during the next phase. After the import I ensure that none of the RAWs were corrupted before wiping the SD cards.

I have a total of three folders that assist with organization: the ‘inbox’ contains all projects that have not been rated, ‘post-prod’ contains those projects that are awaiting or currently undergoing post production and ‘finalized’ is self-explanatory.

The next step is ‘rate and reject’. I do this image by image in preview mode and immediately reject any image that doesn’t seem appealing in terms of framing, composition, mood or has obvious faults, notably blur. My own guidelines for the rating of images are rather vague:

• 1 star: acceptable image, something that I can keep as a memory and possibly to show family
• 2 stars: decent image, this is something I can show both family and friends
• 3 stars: good image, either framing, composition or mood is good enough to outweigh other defaults
• 4 stars: great image, where both subject and technique just seem ‘right’
• 5 stars: exceptional images that really captivate the viewer or tell a story

The rating procedure itself can at times be emotional, so I might give an image an additional star simply for being very iconic of a trip or for its sentimental value.

Once rated, a project moves into ‘prost-prod’. Post production is usually limited to cropping, realignment, WB- and curve optimization of 3+ stars images. CA correction, noise reduction and sharpening are added as required. If very obvious, I also try and retouch things such as obvious dust-specs on an image. Finished projects move into the ‘finalized’ folder.

Generally I make heavy use of filtering to simplify the organization of my images and have a number of smart albums both per project and library-wide. Occasionally, I go back and update ratings or meta-data of finalized projects.