Shoot with multiple photographers..what is the best way to organize?

[Darras]

What is the best way to organize a shoot with many photographers? I was thinking of putting initials in the file name with date, put all in the same file and sort by Creation Time to see all images in the real order the shot were taken...? Any tips or suggestions on that one? Do you think there is a simpler and clearer way? Please, tell me!

When I've shot weddings with 2 other photographers, we all synced our cameras up to the exact same time (to the second). That way we had the order of the day, even when the photographers were in two different places.

As for seeing who's photo is who's, it really wasn't too hard. In fact, we've shot together enough times that we can look at a photo and say "wide angle portrait, must be Brad" or "50mm at f2.0, must be Ryan" or "fabulous post-processing, must be Eric". You start to recognize each other's style and can easily identify between photos.

But yeah, if it's too hard to identify then adding a keyword with the photographer's name is a good idea, or adding their name to the copyright sig in the photo data.

[ravncat]

consider something like the xrite color checker passport - so that you can get profiles and colors for each camera - and for the different lightings - allowing simmilar appearances of your images across cameras, especially if they are different camera bodies.

Go into the file options and set the file naming structures to be obvious - so that you can easily tell which image is from which camera. If shooting jpg and raw - it`s important to synch the jpg settings.

With the cameras profiled, matched, and set with appropriate copyright, naming, etc - all that is left is the photographers themselves. Everyone should have a clear idea of what they need to get.

When do you want multiple photographers on the same subject, when do you want them doing seperate things. Have a way to keep in contact. Before everyone starts - make sure all the basic settings are where they should be (does everyone have the same WB settings? Does everyone have autobracketing off, exposure compensation at 0 -- etc. Treat their cameras like yours - make sure nothing is going to goof up.

When shooting sequences of things - it can be useful to use a shot of your foot or hand - to mark the beginning of something and an end - or a shot of a board - or some other thing to make it easy to find where something (as opposed to just when it is)

Consistency between multiple camera output, ranks up top for me.

[Jim Bryant]

I normally use three cameras when shooting. One with a 17-35 another with a 28-70mm and the last with a 70-200. The editing program I prefer to use is Photomechanics. This program allows me to not only batch name my images, but I can move the images around to get an order inwhich the images were taken be each camera. Then I batch name. But, yes the answer to your question use subject-initials-date. ravncat makes some good points as to standardizing everything. Don't want to have to do too much post processing because someone's settings were off.

[Darras]

Thank you for all this precious information, it's very to nice to have replied!! It helped me a lot!! Reallly...I am very happy!

[WooD]

Originally Posted by Darras

What is the best way to organize a shoot with many photographers? I was thinking of putting initials in the file name with date, put all in the same file and sort by Creation Time to see all images in the real order the shot were taken...? Any tips or suggestions on that one? Do you think there is a simpler and clearer way? Please, tell me!

I'm not understanding your question.

I've been on shoots where there were 6 photographer, and around 20 models.

We all had a story line to follow, and split into groups for our shots. After the shoot we all posted our images on separate web sites, so we could pick out the ones we could use.

Each photographer kept his or her own images separate from everyone else's. Did you plan on dumping everyone's images to the same folder, or site?

[jojonac]

I really like the Idea of syncing the cameras down to the second. Another way to keep the files separate is to just make separate folders for each shooter and unload the memory cards into each one.

jojo

[Darras]

We will be 3 photographers at least, and 2 people at the video also....though I will only gather all the pictures. I want them to be in all one folder, so that when I scroll into them, I will have them in order of the moment they were taken, though I want them to be organized and well structured, so that I will quickly know who took the shot and what was the date...putting the date with initials and sequence number really works for me! I will set up all the cameras with the exact same time, adjusted to the second!! For the non digital pictures, I'll put them in a separate folder when the films will be developed!
But once they are renamed...do they change the creation time for the time that I modified the file name? That way, I won't be able to reorganize the pictures and sort them by creation time to put them in order...

[kirbinster]

Syncing the time is critical, I learned this two weeks ago when I went on a photowalk with two bodies and one did not flip for daylight savings time - what a pain. If you use Lightroom you can sort and separate stuff by camera serial number.