Sunday 9 January 2011

A Little Order, Please

My photo storage is A Mess.  At one time I had a fairly reasonable filing system.  Then I got a new Nikon that came with all sorts of software and I started downloading using Nikon Transfer.  Then I decided to learn to use Photoshop.  All of these programs store the photos differently and when I start to look for something, reverting to my own filing system, I find things all mixed up.  Photos have been added to folders that they don't belong in, huge folders have been created by date, sitting next to folders with one or two photos in them, and I can't find anything. 

I got a lovely back-up drive for Christmas and have copied my whole 'Pictures' file onto it, in its confused and unwieldy whole.  Next, I am going to take the first file apart, throw out (shudder, sob) a lot of losers, and rationalize the wretched thing.  If I don't get this done, may the next bird I photograph shit in my eye!

While plotting out what I am going to do, I actually found three photos that I wanted to use for the 365 project some time ago -- before I lost them.

 115/365  Walking the YD's dog in a November sunset.

 116/365  Bark.  Not the dog, though.  From the same afternoon.

117/365.  Snow.  I have played with this one a lot, and it is quite pixilated, if you enlarge it any more than this.  But I like the colour contrast.

6 comments:

  1. Mary, I have this same problem. Back in August my computer crashed so I transferred a lot of photos to a thumb drive. I store years worth of photos online at snapfish, so I decided to organize those into categories rather than by date before I uploaded the rest. I worked on that for a few days...and haven't gone back to it since. Argh! I used to be a scrapbooker, but I haven't worked on that for three years, and until I get this blivet under control, I see no point in trying to take more or better pictures.

    I have the feeling you will take matters under control and be much more organized in no time. Good luck, and enjoy the journey.

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  2. Storage and organization can be a problem. I wonder if a program such as Lightroom would help you. I have never used it but sometimes think I should. There also is or used to be ACDSee or something like that. If you're a Mac user, I have heard good things about Aperture.

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  3. now that I'm taking so many more pictures keeping them organized is truly a chore.

    oooh... this reminds me, now that 2010 is done I want to get all those pix transfered to a DVD for further safe keeping (then get them off my computer, so they'll only be on extra drive and DVD... I try to always have in two places... since I lost nearly a years worth of pictures before)

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  4. my favorite is the picture of bark. Since joining 365 I've had to weed out my pictures. You take a lot of bad shots trying to get one you think is good enough to post.

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  5. The colour on that last shot IS beautiful. It's almost as though you turned the rest of the photo black & white. I love the birch bark, too...

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  6. My problem is too many organizers. The thing that I find I use best is my own folder system, nested files and folders by category and date. For example, category = winter. subfolders = '10, '09, etc, and inside these subs topics like 'ice', 'heavy snow' 'sports'. Alas that each folder also has a 'misc'. With a lot of stuff in it.

    Snapped P, the shot was mostly greys and blacks and I enhanced the green.

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