I had a great time a few weeks ago giving a talk about my photography as part of the @Google talk series down at the Mountain View Campus. During the hour long conversation I talked about my own approach to photography, how I’ve integrated it into my life, how I’m able to produce the volume of photographs I do while having a day job and family, my project to publish 1,000,000 photos before I die and my project to photograph the 100 largest American cities.

I also comment on the photo sharing space, Flickr, Google+, etc. and answer questions at the end.

Thanks so much to +Brian Rose for having me down to Google.

You can follow them on Twitter here.

You can find the podcast here.

I probably get more questions about my workflow (or what camera to buy) than any other sorts of questions. So since it’s been a year now, I thought I’d update my own personal photography workflow.

Step 1. Capture the Image: At present my daily set up includes a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera (which I love but which has a *horrible* problem with dust), and five Canon lenses. The 14mm f/2.8, the 24mm f/1.4, the 50mm f/1.2 (with crappy autofocus), the 100mm f/2.8 macro and my favorite lens the 135 f/2.

Also with me everywhere I go is a 17 inch MacBook Pro, a Hoodman high speed firewire 800 card reader, my camera battery charger and an extra battery and 3CF cards (a 8GB, 16GB and 32GB, all by SanDisk). My 16GB card has recently been having problems and has been acting up so I’ll probably throw that out and buy another new 32GB card before my next big photography trip.

I recently replaced my camera backpack going from the Lowepro CompuDayPak to the Computrekker Plus AW backpack. The zipper on my CompuDayPak was shot and after three years or so of daily use the bag was falling apart. It supposedly has a lifetime guarantee, but when I looked at the guarantee more closely it looked like it didn’t cover every day wear and tear and especially issues with zippers.

The new backpack is substantially more sturdy. I like it a lot more. My gear feels much better protected and it’s got a ton more room. Unfortunately it does feel a bit bulky and sometimes I feel like it looks like I’ve got a suitcase strapped to my back and look like a dork.

I shoot almost every day out and about in the Bay Area, sometimes at night for special events, photowalks etc. and most significantly as part of my project to document the 100 largest cities in America. Lately I’ve been taking intensive five day trips to different large American cities where I’ll shoot over 10,000 frames. I shot Nashville and Memphis in January, Miami in March and I’m heading to Detroit next in early June.

2. Step 2. Transfer my images to my MacBook Pro. One of the best photography tools I’ve purchased in the last few years has been my highspeed FireWire 800 card reader (see link above). It can transfer a full 32 GB card in less than 15 minutes. When I’m out in the field I’ll use little breaks occasionally to offload images from my cards to my MacBook Pro with this card reader which is always with me. If you are still using camera cables or a USB card reader, you have no idea the speed you are missing.

I usually drag and drop the files directly from the card to a folder I create on my MacBook Pro with the date of the shoot. If I’m in the field this is the fastest way to get the images off the card and get me back shooting again. It takes over twice as long to have Lightroom copy and import the photos for me, so I only use Lightroom to do this task if I’m already in for the night, at home, etc. and don’t care about the time it takes to transfer files.

I bring two hard drives with me on trips. A 750GB external Seagate Hard Drive that serves as a Time Machine drive to backup my Mac. And an extra 1TB Seagate Free Agent drive (which I LOVE, is USB powered and not much larger than an iPhone or a pack of cards — this drive is the ultimate portable travel hard drive and a great value). The Free Agent drive is where I put extra images when I fill up my MacBook Pro 500GB internal hard drive.

When I get home I’ll frequently offload day shoots from my MacBook Pro to one of my 5 archive Drobos. Here my photos are backed up and replicated. I can then later copy the files back to my MBP when I’m ready to actually process them. At any given time I’ve got photos I’m processing on my MBP (backed up with Time Machine).

I’ve also now begun backing up my files in the cloud to Mozy as well. More on this later.

3. Step 3. Synch my images to Lightroom. After I add a day’s shoot to process I’ll synch my MBP photos folder with Lightroom to import these images into Lightroom.

4. Step 4. Flag Images in Lightroom. Next I go through a days shoot using Lightroom to flag all of the photos that I want to process. Depending on the shoot I’ll usually process anywhere from 5% of my shots to 20% of my shots I’d estimate.

5. Step 5. Move all of my flagged images to a “flagged photos” subfolder in that date’s folder. I do this so that I can keep straight which images I’ve processed and which I haven’t. This way if I want to go through the photos that I passed on the first time around and revisit them to process latter I’ll be able to keep this straight in my records. I don’t always process 100% of what I flag, but pretty close.

6. Step 6. Develop my photos one by one. Here I go through Lightroom’s develop module to individually process every photo on a one by one basis. I rely heavily on presets as well. I’ve got probably 500 or so presets that I regularly use on my photos. Many of these I’ve gotten from other photographers. Many of these I’ve made myself. Sometimes I’ll process a photo without using a preset, but many times I’ll use a preset as my starting point to give the photo a certain look before tweaking it further from there. Rarely do I ever just use a preset and export. I almost always tweak the photo from my presets.

When I’m developing I will frequently adjust contrast, temperature, brightness, exposure, vignetting, sharpening and noise reduction. I’ve only recently been using noise reduction so much more with Adobe’s new beta version of Lightroom 3.

Adobe’s improved noise reduction tool in the new beta may be the single most significant advancement in digital photo processing that I’ve ever seen. It has blown me away and if you are not using it you really are missing out. Anyone can download the Lightroom beta for free right now here. Adobe’s new noise reduction technology allows for regular shooting at 6400 iso on my camera, which opens up a whole new realm of what is possible with night photography.

I was able to shoot some amazing night street portraits down in Miami Beach in March at very high isos and eliminate all of the noise in these high iso photos with this feature. Here’s an example of a street portrait that I shot at iso 4,000 in Miami. It’s amazing to me how easy it was for the new Lightroom beta to get the noise out of this high iso photograph.

Frequently I’ll also use the cloning tool in Lightroom to eliminate visible dust on my images. Canon’s so called anti-dust technology sucks big time (see above). Cloning out dust is the number one waste of time for me in processing my images. Recently I bought the Arctic Butterfly brush to give that a try to improve the situation. I was using sensor swabs and methanol but they weren’t really working. I’ll try and post an update on the Arctic Butterfly once I have time to test it out sufficiently.

6B. Step 6B. External Processing in Nik Silver Efex or Photoshop. Occasionally I’ll do additional developing work on an image using either Nik Silver Efex or Photoshop CS5. Photoshop CS5 kicks serious ass. I haven’t been using Silver Efex really since I’ve been on the Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta. For some reason it seems to warp my images when I send them to Nik as an external editor. My images also get warped if I send them to photoshop as an external editor as well, so usually when I do work in photoshop I’ll just open the exported file directly in Photoshop to do more work on them.

Nik Silver Efex Pro is one of the best black and white conversion packages I’ve ever used. I’m hoping that when the official non-beta LR release is out that it will make it possible for me to use Nik Silver Efex again. You can download and use Nik Silver Efex Pro free for a 15 day trial. If you haven’t checked this out yet, you should.

Mostly in Photoshop I’ll do little things like add a frame, or add a blending layer to manufacture artificial film like scratches on a photo, or little touches like this. I don’t do this alot because it’s time consuming. Lately I’ve also begun painting some of my photographs in Photoshop. You can read more about that in my review on the CS5 Photoshop Beta here. Look for Photoshop CS5 to be released shortly.

7. Step 7. Export my file as a full sized high quality JPEG image. Lightroom defaults to 240 DPI (not sure why) so I use this as my output DPI with the highest quality full sized JPG. These images are exported to a “finished photos” folder.

As I export each photo I will name it at that time. A lot of people ask me where the titles on my photos come from. They come from all over really. My titles are frequently very personal to me, obscure and abstract. They frequently have a story that only I know behind them. They are frequently inspired by music or are lyrics to a song that I relate to that image in my own mind.

8. Step 8. Keywording. Once I’ve finished processing a days shoot, I will synchronize my finished files folder in Lightroom and begin keywording. I’ll apply broad general keywords to all of the photos usually like the location (city, state, country) or batch keyword big groups of photos that cover the same subject (graffiti, neon, venue, subject, etc.). Then I’ll go through the photos one by one looking at each for any unique keywords possible.

If the photo is of a neon sign or of a specific location I’ll also frequently go get the address of the venue from Google and paste that into the keyword description.

This meta data is later automatically applied to my image when I upload it online.

9. Step 9. Geotagging. I use Google Earth and Geotagger next to geotag *some* of my images. In general I’ll geotag if it’s easy. For awhile the OCD in me was geotagging every single image I’d process. I’d painstakingly go through Google Earth and geotag them one by one by one. This was a ton of work, especially if the work needed to be done in a city that I’m not as familiar with. Now I’ll just geotag the images if it’s super easy and I can get there quickly in Google Earth or if a bunch of images are from same location and I can batch them.

Once the new version of iPhone’s OS can multitask, I’ll probably start trying out some of the geotagging geolocational apps for the iPhone. Or there’s a good chance that I’ll switch to an Android based phone in July when my iPhone contract is up and I’ll see what I can use for that there.

10. Step 10. Archiving. Once I’m done with this I’ll sort my images into what I consider A quality photos and B quality photos. These are then transferred to a Drobo, where I have an “A to be uploaded” folder and a “B to be uploaded” folder.

11. Step 11. Publishing. Twice a day (once in the morning, once at night) I’ll pull 5 photos from my A folder and 17 photos from my B folder at random and upload them to Flickr. This is a total of 44 photos a day that I upload.

I’ve got about 20,000 unpublished photos in my to be uploaded photos folders at present. I always upload what I feel are my five strongest images of any batch upload as the last five to Flickr. This way these are the five that will show up for my contacts when they see my photos in their contacts page. These 5 will also show up on the first page of my main Flickr page if someone goes there directly.

If a photo gets 25 faves or more on Flickr, I’ll generally blog that photo at thomashawk.com as well. You can see these photos on a version of thomashawk.com filtered only for the photoblog portion here.

Once these photos are published they go into a folder by month based on upload date. (Note, the original RAW files always stay in the folder of the date they were taken).

Anyways, that’s about it. This article is a bit longer than the past few years, but I’ve been doing a lot more with my processing as well. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments or offer up any suggetions you might have for improving my own workflow. Thanks!

The photo above represents my 30,000th photograph published to Flickr. It’s a milestone and part of my continuing goal to publish 1,000,000 photos to Flickr before I die. This photograph is from one of my favorite shoots. A shoot I did with my wife and children a ways back in this storm drain in Big Tujunga Canyon.

Piled the wife and kids into the Buick last Friday morning and headed out for open road. Spent 5 days pretty much shooting non-stop. Mostly focused on neon, especially in and around Las Vegas.

Some thoughts and highlights of the trip.

1. Bakersfield’s a magical place. Only the second time I’ve ever shot there but I have a feeling that I’ll be back many times in the future. Buck Owen’s Crystal Palace is something everyone should try at least once in their life. A good steak, big beers, and a wonderful performance by Buddy Allen Owens, Buck Owens’ son. Bigger country western stars come play there too. David Alan Coe was on the list as an upcoming act. The vintage neon in Bakersfield is remarkable. Some of the best in California. The Silver Fox, Guthrie’s Alley Cat, the Fox Theater. We stayed at the Marriott this time for something like $60 a night. Last time we stayed at the Doubletree. The Marriott’s probably the biggest hotel in this small town and I liked it better. They had photographs of Bakersfield neon in the rooms. 100 degree plus heat that felt great at night.

2. We stayed at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, for also insanely cheap rates. I’ve stayed at the Strip plenty of times in the past, but never stayed on Fremont Street and wanted to shoot a lot of the older neon around that area. Saturday night was over $100, but Sun-Thurs was around $50 a night. The Golden Nugget probably has the best pool for kids in Vegas complete with a waterslide that goes through a shark tank. The wife and kids spent a lot of time at the pool while I was out around town shooting. I was warned about the Golden Nugget by a few in my family. My brother told me I’d be checking out after the first night. I have no idea what they are talking about. I liked staying there as much as anyplace else I’ve ever stayed in Vegas.

3. This was the first time that I really got off the Strip and spent significant time exploring broader Las Vegas. There are so many broken old motel signs. So many old broken people. There’s a significant homeless problem in Las Vegas. Encampments of them camped out in tents in Northern Las Vegas. They seem to keep it all away from the strip save an occasional panhandler or guy selling water on the bridge walkways between Strip casinos. You see a lot more of it though just South of Fremont Street where many of the old Vegas motels have become de-facto housing for the poor.

I ran into Steve down South of Fremont Street. My write up on him here. The neon sign for the Star View Motel being demolished.

4. The best meal we had was at the Mexican restaurant called Diego in the MGM Grand. A wonderfully modern designed place in red and spectacular Mexican Food. Be sure to order the guacamole which they have a guacamole person make for you in front of you adding in the ingredients that you’d like. We also had tacos at the Pink Taco at the Hard Rock which were very good as well.

5. I think that there are more billboards for lawyers in Las Vegas than anyplace else I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure why this is the case.

clockwise starting upper left: shooting silhouettes at the Bellagio Fountain, Death Valley, a reflection of the poolside shark tank/waterslide at the Golden Nugget, the Star View Motel being demolished

6. Boulder City is a charming little town and worth the drive south down below Vegas. It’s on the way to Hoover Dam and from what I understand largely prospered as a place for people building the dam to live way back when. I wanted to hit Boulder City to get many of the neon signs there. While I was there they were literally tearing down the old Starview Motel on the main drag with a backhoe. I got some photos of them tearing it down. It’s a great old vintage sign and another that is sure to be gone soon with the motel being torn down. Sometimes shooting these old neon signs feels like a race against time.

7. I was unimpressed by Hoover Dam. I’m not sure why exactly. It’s a spectacular work of architecture. It could have been the fact that I visited at probably the worst time to shoot it (high noon). I think it could be an interesting place to photograph early in the morning or in the evening closer to sunset.

The Lawless Shopping Center in North Las Vegas is similar in style to many of the smaller 50s-60s style vintage neon signs that can still be found in Las Vegas in areas off the Strip.

8. The trip up to the top of Paris, Las Vegas is worth the price. Find a two for one coupon in one of the freebie tourist brochures that are everywhere in Vegas. Plan ahead and try to get up there about a half hour before sunset in order to shoot the tail end of the sunset from up there. Thanks to Lee for suggesting this. I made it up there on the tail end of the sunset and missed probably some better shots if I’d gotten up there a half hour earlier.

9. This trip was the first time I’d been to Death Valley. It’s truly something. I wish I’d had more time to spend there. I’d love to shoot it at night someday. Deciding to take the long picturesque way home from Vegas, rather than the faster I-15 to I-5 way was my favorite thing about the trip. It made for a really long drive but there is so much natural beauty through Death Valley and the Sierras.

I processed just a couple of photos which I’ve included in this post. I’m so far behind on my processing and I’m not sure how exactly to deal with that problem. In all I took 7,444 frames over five days on this trip. More and more I’m seeing road trips like this as a model for the type of photography that I need to be doing.

The only problem with my level of shooting these days is that I’m shooting so much that my RAW undeveloped files are growing and growing and growing. Right now I’m working on processing images from last December and getting further and further and further behind. My thought though is that someday when I’m old and gray my body will begin to fail and my distribution of time will shift more towards processing and less towards shooting and maybe then I can catch up — although apparently photography Garry Winogrand died with 300,000 still unprocessed so I suppose that’s always a risk.

Anyways, many, many more photos in the months/years ahead from this trip.

You can see my bigger collection of photos taken in Las Vegas here.

Thanks for including me Trevor!

A few weeks back when I was down visiting with Adobe’s Lightroom Team, I had an opportunity to stop by and spend some time with Kelly Castro, an amazing photographer who I’ve long admired who works on the team. Kelly took the above portrait of me while I was down there as part of his Exteriors series. It was a honor to be photographed by someone with Kelly’s creativity and talent. Thanks Kelly for including me in this fantastic series. You can see more of Kelly’s work on Flickr here.

I had a lot of fun a few weeks back out at the Golden Gate Bridge doing a video interview about my photography with Marc Silber for his new photography series Mark Silber’s Photo Show. We talk about my style, my equipment and what personally motivates me in photography. Thanks to Marc Silber for having me on his show and to Rocky Barbanica for doing a great job as usually filming and editing while out at Baker Beach at the Golden Gate Bridge. You can watch the video directly over at Marc’s show here.

Sandisk is sponsoring Marc’s new show and I think it’s really great that they are willing to invest in social media this way. I’ve personally used Sandisk cards for many years and think they’re great! You can follow Marc’s blog here and his great new video series here.

The shot above is one of the shots I got of the Golden Gate Bridge while out shooting with Marc.