Tour Content Workflow

Why A Good Workflow Matters

Being a touring content creator means having thousands upon thousands of files sitting in your hard drive by the end of a tour. Organization is key in your success, helping you clearly keep track of projects you’re working on, have already delivered and ones that you want to revisit at a later time. Being on the road as a photographer means you never truly have downtime, so make it easy on yourself and have everything in order so you can enjoy the road while you’re there. I’m by no means saying my way of working is the correct one, but take this as a baseline to figure out what works best for you.

Before the Tour

Congrats! You’ve landed a tour. Let’s start prepping for all the gigabytes you’ll be sorting through.

First and foremost, you need access to two programs: Adobe Lightroom and Dropbox. This is where most of the flowing is going to come from, so make sure you get yourself familiar with how these programs work.

My Computer

The very first thing I do is find the tour flyer and read every date. Be familiar with the path you’re taking and the types of venues you’ll be shooting in. Next, I’ll plug in my SSD hard drive that I have velcroed to the back of my Mac and create a new folder.

This is what my folder for touring looks like. Interpret this as every arrow to the next folder means that’s what’s inside the folder before.

The main folder on my SSD is “BAND NAME x Olivia Bastone.” This is my master folder for everything relating to this tour; basically a space for me to put anything and everything I need.
Inside that master folder, I make a folder for every tour date and off day (if you don’t know them at first, don’t worry about it.) Since this is just for my organization, I don’t worry about adding any extra info to the title - date and city are fine.
Inside that folder, I have a folder for my RAW files and one for my final edits. If you’re feeling extra organized like I am, make a folder within the RAW folder for all your MP4 clips. This makes it super easy when opening Adobe Premiere to know exactly where all my video files are located.

Gear Prep

External Hard Drives

I really recommend purchasing two copies of an external hard drive. Both will be identical copies of each other and will always be kept in different locations for safety. I keep one copy in my backpack and one copy in my camera bag or bunk. As these are used as backups of your work, ideally you would sync them every day. Realistically, I sync them every two shows.

To go the extra mile, get a padded case and label them. Generally I stick with “Band Name / Date of Content / Olivia Bastone / Phone Number.” Putting some contact information on it is great in case they ever get misplaced!

And last note, make sure to properly format them before you try to put information on them. A quick Google search of how to format an external hard drive will tell you exactly how to do that.

Cameras and Cords

Understanding your camera settings is important for efficiency before, during and after shooting. I don’t mean learning about every little thing on your camera, but things like making sure the internal clock is accurate, making sure the files are in RAW, etc. And to go along with that, make sure you have the proper cords for file transportation based on whatever laptop you have.

On the Road

The first show is over! You’ve been shooting all day and it’s time to dump your SD card while you wait in line to shower.

Lightroom

When you open Lightroom, there are three ways you can organize your pictures.

Create a new catalog for every show date and keep that in its respective folder on your SSD.
Create weekly catalogs for 3-5 shows at a time, keeping the catalogs in a separate "LIGHTROOM CATALOGS” folder on your SSD.
Have one catalog for the whole tour and put every photo in there.

I prefer to have weekly catalogs option. They’re pretty easy to identify on your SSD - the icon will show up in the format “.lrcat.”

To do this, go to the File tab at the top left of the screen and select New Catalog. Feel free to name it in whatever fashion you’d like to organize by. As for location, put it in that master “LIGHTROOM CATALOGS” folder you’ve already made.

Importing

Here are the steps I take to importing my files:

Once you’ve created your catalog, plug your SD card into your laptop. Sometimes that automatically triggers the Import setting, but if it doesn’t, click Import in the bottom left corner.
When the screen pops up, the left side is what you’re importing and the right side is where it’s going. Click on the SD card you’ve inserted and make sure that all the photos you want to import are checked.
At the top of the window, I click on Copy, which means my files will be imported to my SSD and to the Lightroom Catalog.
Now on the right side, I locate the corresponding dated folder, and further the RAW folder within it. Click on that.
Under the Destination toggle, there’s also an option of how to label the imported selection. Generally, I stick with the Into One Folder option - the “one folder” being that RAW folder we’ve already created.
Now you’re ready to press Import!

Editing

This is the only part of the guide that I can’t give you advice for! Everyone has their own editing style, so go crazy. However, try to create a few presets that you can build off of for the tour to keep consistency and make your life easier. If you’re spending too long on a photo, move to the next one and maybe try it later. I would show you what my presets are labeled, but they’re pretty ridiculously named (mostly after random objects in my vicinity at their creation).

A rule of thumb: if you don’t like the photo after 30 seconds, skip it.

Exporting

Here are my exporting steps:

Since we’ve already created our Finals folder for the day, that’s where everything is going to end up. Move from the Develop tab to the Library tab at the top right. Select all your edits and click Export, on the bottom left. Under the Export To option, make sure to select the appropriate Finals folder on your SSD.
How you label your exported photos is important. Under File Naming, check the Rename To box, and click Custom Setting. I label mine as such:

So for example:
**“230806-TheLumineers-Credit-@OLIVIA.BASTONE-23"**
Now, no matter where these photos get sent around, the show date and proper credit is available.

Once you press *Done* on the file naming, the next section is the *File Settings* and *Image Settings*.

Here are the settings I use for optimal image quality for social media and file sharing.

Dropbox

The heavy lifting is complete, all you’ve got to do is share these puppies with the band. I swear by Dropbox, but if Google Drive is more your speed, have at it.

Organizing

The biggest thing to remember here is this is what your client is going to see. You may be a Dropbox aficionado, but the goal here is to make file access as simple as possible for your client.

Main Folder - Just like on your SSD, we begin with a master folder for your client. I like to label mine “Band x Olivia Bastone,” and sometimes I add the year at the end if it isn’t a client I work for often. This type of labeling is also reserved for touring or when I’m delivering more than just one folder of content.

In the master folder, you’ll have each indivifual show folder and a “Video” folder.

Show Folders - Make it as clear as possible; “Date - City, State @ Venue”.

To go the extra mile: I add these into the master folder *as the tour progresses*, instead of keeping every folder in here from the beginning. That way, your clients can go to the folder at the bottom and know it’s from that night’s show.

Inside the show folders, I make two additional folders, one for photo and one for video. Again, make it as simple to use as possible.

You might see I have two video folders- yep, you’re going to upload every video into their respective show video folder as well as into the “Video” folder in the master folder.

This is what mine looks like. I’ll add folders like *Portraits* or *Merch* too, again copying these images into their respective show folders as well. Two places the content can be found, twice as easy to locate them for the client.

Upload away from here! I wish you the fastest wifi during this time.

Finale

Ultimately, everyone finds their own rhythm with their tour workflow, but I hope looking into mine helps you decide what you like best. Tour can be crazy and quick-paced, so give yourself time to live in the moment by saving those precious minutes on a more efficient process. And be sure to get a photo of you somewhere along the way!

- Liv