Any photograph you include in your report should either provide proof of a statement contained within it or somehow add value to the report. The assumption for any report you write has to be that it will land on the desk of someone whose previous exposure to marine assets is what they see reported on the news. (Reports and Reporting are included in a later Conducting an Inspection post.)
We will not touch on the concern for copyright, use of the photographs in presentations, publications, and so on. This is for you to work out with your clients, the asset management, and potentially their consciousness of copyright law, confidentiality, and how often they have had to defend themselves due to poor photos…
If you want more details on copyright, then check the UK Government website, check your own jurisdiction if you are working elsewhere, and just assume that any images you take as part of the inspection are owned by the entity that pays you to conduct the inspection.
Use a good point and shoot camera
Your own preference notwithstanding of course. You could use a full professional set-up with a DSLR, multiple lenses, tripod, lighting rig, and so on… knock yourself out! Just remember that you have to carry it around with you, along with all your other equipment (Conducting an Inspection – Equipment). At a push, your smartphone has a great camera, for selfies and social media for sure, maybe not so much for a plethora of detailed technical shots of parts of a vessel.
A separate, relatively new camera, will offer better quality shots, low-light modes, color correction, a better zoom, easier editing on a laptop, and more storage. Aim for a high megapixel count and a large optical zoom that fits within your budget. You will also look much more professional using a dedicated camera than a smartphone. Also, consider the consequences if you drop your equipment.
Ensure the correct meta-data is included in the picture files created
Meta-data is the additional details for the file that is automatically included when you take a photo. This can include the date, time, location, ISO, format, exposure levels, and so on. Ensure the correct time and date have been programmed to the camera. If it has GPS built-in, enable it. There is no real need to have the date and time displayed in the photo, it is included in the meta-data and if you forgot to update your camera for the time zone it would be incorrect with no easy way to correct the photograph after the fact.
Review your photographs prior to departure from the site
This is to check the photographs are in focus, ‘make sense” as well as a double check that you can read the files and have not been saving the photographs to a phantom memory card or in a corrupted format.
Some photographs you take will make no sense when you review them. This could be due to the angle, lighting, or some other factor. The unsecured equipment may look very secure, the leaky pipe is not so leaky, or every image has a thumb in it.
Back up your data
This cannot be emphasized enough. Back it up, this is for any data really. Digital storage devices are now relatively cheap. Before you leave the worksite check you can read the camera files, copy the files to an external storage device. Your laptop, the cloud, another USB drive, or anything else you have available. Do not wait to get home before checking that you have readable files available. in our experience, three-hundred (300) photographs take around 1.5Gb of space, plan accordingly.
We have had great success using iDrive for our backup process (5Tb for $60 a year for the first year). It includes apps for phones, computers etc. If your company pays for Microsoft or apple then you could have access to OneDrive or iCloud, maybe even Google Drive, just be aware of the storage limits for these providers.
Keep your photos
Plan for some long-term storage. Keep the photos safe. Invest in either a cloud storage provider, multiple memory cards, external hard drive, or similar. Keep your photographic backups. As you grow and gain experience you will find that looking back on the photos will remind you of your past experience. You will also find that occasionally you need an old file for a new presentation, or a colleague will ask if you have a photo showing XYZ, and it’s always handy to have something to hand. They are also handy, with the meta-data, as a record of where and when you carried out the inspections for your logbook.
General Concepts:
- Take a photo of the vessel’s name as the first photo of the inspection. This allows you to quickly note that all photos after that one are on the same vessel/project. If the vessel name is not handy then write something on a piece of paper and snap that.
- Each picture will take around 1-3Mb of space, depending on the settings used. (Based on our experience with an 18Mp Sony DSC-WX220 camera.)
- Compressing/cropping photographs takes time. Try and frame the photo to minimize editing.
- Avoid having any human near the focal point, or anywhere in the picture really. People seeing the report will assume the worst or spot something ‘bad’ for anyone in the frame.
- If attending over multiple days, copy and back-up the camera files each evening, use their own dated folder on your backup medium/laptop.
- Expect to take about three-hundred (300) photos for a full vessel inspection. One-hundred (100) for a specific project cargo/loadout. For incidents/accident investigations the sky is the limit.
- Take escessive amounts of photos anyway, take some of sunsets, ships silhouetted against the skyline, artisitic shots of wildlife interacting with the ship and so on… these are very handy for posts on Linked In, marketing materials and media. It’s quite amazing how many times you will be asked for photos of specific things.
- Consider “tagging” the photos with key words when you have them on your computer.
If you have any questions or comments on this post or any suggestions for future posts, do not hesitate to reach out to the team at Aluciant (details on the home page.)