Workflow for an outdoor location photo session: exercise 2

For the Exercise 2 I devised a workflow based on an outdoor photo assignment. Similar to Exercise 1, this workflow covers all stages of my photographic session from ‘the day before’ preparations to the finished product. There are many similarities between the two workflows that I devised; the flowchart that I used for Exercise 1, equally applies to Exercise 2.

However, there are also some differences between the two processes which I would like to mention in this note.    

My outdoor session was to record my 2 day visit to Perth and Kinross, Scotland. As per the exercise brief, the assignment was “unstructured and open-ended” and “the number of images unpredictable but probably many”. The workflow allowed for some ongoing review of images during the shoot.

My workflow started with a planning and preparation stage. As before, I spent some time thinking through the aims, locations and timing but this time I took a much more flexible approach. Because of the nature of my trip to Scotland and many uncertainties involved (including the weather and road conditions etc) it would have been wasteful to prepare a detailed plan. In comparison to Exercise 1, I outlined my aims only very broadly.  I spent some time thinking through the possible locations to establish some options of ‘where’ and ‘when’ the session(s) might take place. For example, I checked potential locations ahead of time, how to get there and where to park, and whether there are any challenges to accessing the area. Maps and GPS played an important role in this process.  

Equally important was to check the weather, sunrise and sunset times and select equipment suitable to the weather conditions expected on the day.

Never leave for Scotland without a waterproof! The weather forecast was for plenty of rain so I packed my waterproof cases and some spare supermarket carrier bags which are useful for protecting lenses and cameras from spray.

The rest of preparations were similar to the ones carried out in Exercise 1 but less demanding because this assignment was designed to be open-ended and there were no lighting equipment or backdrops to worry about.