Murphy's Laws of Digital Photography

Sometimes it helps to throw in a little humor, especially when it is true!
I hope you enjoy this post. For those of you who are working photographers I feel sure you may have encountered at least half of these things more than once.
 Enjoy!!

Murphy's Digital Photography Laws

       You are not Ansel Adams

       Neither are you Herb Ritz

       Nor are you Annie Liebovitz

       Automatic Cameras - Aren't

       Auto Focus - won't

       If you can't remember, you left the digital media at home

       No photo assignment remains unchanged after the first day of shooting

       When in doubt, motor out

       If a photo shoot goes too smoothly, then the lab will lose the RAW files

       If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid

       Success occurs when no one is looking, failure occurs when the Client is watching

       The most critical image is corrupted

       If you forgot, then you did not save to disk

       Photo Assistants are essential, they give photographers someone to yell at

       The one item (batteries, media, and etc.) you need is always in short supply

       Interchangeable parts aren't

       Long life batteries only last for a couple of shots

       Weather never cooperates

       Everything always works in your home, everything always fails on location

       For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism

       The newest and least experienced photographer will usually win the Pulitzer

       Every instruction given to a lab, which can be misunderstood, will be

       There is always a way, and it usually doesn't work

       Never tell the Photo Editor you have nothing to do

       Things which must be shipped together as a set, aren't

       No photojournalist is well dressed

       No well dressed photographer is a photojournalist

       Professional photographers are predictable; the world is full of dangerous amateurs

       The best nature shots invariably happen on two occasions;-when animals are ready.-when you're not.

       Same rule as above,  just substitute with children

       Client Intelligence is a contradiction

       There is no such thing as a perfect shoot

       The important things are always simple

       The simple things are always hard

       Flashes will fail as soon as you need them

       A clean (and dry) camera is a magnet for dust, mud and moisture

       Photo experience is something you never get until just after you need it

       The self-importance of a client is inversely proportional to his position in the hierarchy (as is his deviousness and mischievousness)

       The lens that falls is always the most expensive.

       when you drop a lens cap, the inside part always lands face down in the mud.

       Bugs always want to land on the mirror during a lens swap.

       Your batteries will always go dead or you will need to put in a new CF card at the least opportune moment.

       Your batteries will always go dead during a long exposure (or with the shutter open).

Personalize your Digital Workflow

Creating your personalized digital workflow

Photography today is so much more than just taking pictures.  Photographers are now required to be their own editor, hardware support, managing growing storage, finding files, archiving and working on them all. Every photographer should establish a workflow that is repeatable, consistent, and productive. This workflow should be well documented and evolve to accommodate changes in knowledge, software, and your shooting style.

When you are done with a shoot, regardless of the subject matter or intent, each and every shoot should be copied off your memory card and put on your computer.  Never leave the card in the camera any period of time allowing multiple events to pile up on the card.  This is an invitation to disaster! Memory cards are cheap and the size of them continues to grow making it that much easier.   Transferring the files to a computer or external hard drive after each shoot minimizes the possibility of camera card corruption and aids in better organization.  Having multiple memory cards also helps keep things somewhat separated.

A good computer is a necessary tool with any digital photographer. This tool should be equipped with as much RAM as you can afford, preferably 4GB or larger, and the Hard Drive storage should be adequate for working easily in Photoshop, probably at least a 500GB internal hard drive is a great starting point. You should also have an external Hard Drive for a backup of your files. As you create this system try to use a naming system that you can easily remember and isn’t so cryptic as to be easily misunderstood.  

Use one main directory for your photo shoots.  Within that folder are the individual shoots. Within that folder are three more folders. One labeled RAW for your RAW files. One labeled EDITED Files for any files you have edited, and one labeled WEB for any edited files that may be repurposed for later use on the web or for social networking sites.

Consider using other methods for backing up your files. You can use one of the new “Cloud” storage centers or something similar to Apple’s Time Machine. Either is a good choice and adds additional peace of mind for restoring any file that may become corrupted.

The creation of a workflow process will help you in managing your files more easily and guarantees your ability to easily retrieve any file from your past shoots without problems.