Comments on: All The Unhappy Photos aka My Photography Organization Skills (or lack there of)

By: beersandbeans

beersandbeans — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:51:11 +0000

Hi Leigh, Yeah, you are probably right it’s just right in the middle of wedding season and I just can’t do it. Keeping up with editing is tough enough. I got some great advice on Twitter and I realized what I really need to do is just keep grouping things up to more detailed folders. I’m just going to start anew and maybe when we take off in 10 weeks I can sit at a cafe and just organize the old stuff for a week straight. Glad you like the sand painting photo too! I have a multimedia post coming out about Pablo and the sand paintings which should be interesting and will have more sand photos in it!

By: Leigh

Leigh — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:27:26 +0000

I take pictures but not to the extent you do and I too feel unorganized. Since photos are such a huge part of who who are it’s probably worth dedicating a solid week and prioritizing the organization. Let everything else go to hell around you. Mentally you will feel much lighter when it’s done and there’s no reason you can’t accomplish much of what needs to be done in a week. The hour here and hour there never accomplish as much as being dedicated to one goal in a set time frame. Be ruthless.

Love your sand painting photo. Actually love them all but that one in particular.

By: beersandbeans

beersandbeans — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:45:42 +0000

Zee – thanks for your comment! I actually do have things broken down into years, then the topic, then the event then the better, best, etc. But what I have learned is that I need to keep breaking things down even further for editing purposes and to save my sanity!

By: beersandbeans

beersandbeans — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:15:33 +0000

Thanks for the comment Dick! I know it is tough finding the time but at least I love doing it! I have found other, better slide shows the problem is I just can’t get them to work on my site. I am actually trying to break away from the slide shows on the gallery page because I want something a bit more interactive. There are a ton of options out there but for whatever reason they are not working with my site. I’ve been trying to correct this problem for a while now and end up getting frustrated with it. I want to get it squared away soon though because the worst feeling is having it hanging over my head!

I love all the links on your blog – I signed up for your feed!

By: Dick Jordan

Dick Jordan — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:55:32 +0000

I understand your pain!

I shot 3,000+ images during a month-long trip to Europe last Fall. Lots of duds, maybe 10% “keepers.” At home I shoot 100-400 during my weekly Tuesday hikes and have to weed those out, too.

I’ve been using Photoshop Elements for about 2 years. Rather than stick all of my photos in a single “Catalog”, I set up separate ones for each trip, then pick the best ones to use to illustrate a particular travel story and stick copies into a Catalog just for that story. I should make better use of the “Tag” function in PE; all too often I don’t get around to doing so.

I also organize photos into plain old Windows folders. I can add those folders to Picasa and then upload the photos to on-line Picasa Web albums.

Like you, I’m not that keen on “look” of Picasa slideshows, whether they are run directly from the on-line album or embedded in my blog. I have fiddled around a bit with creating “movies” out of still images using Picasa (here’s one you can look at: http://bit.ly/aEZpxW) and also in Photoshop Elements.

I know that some pros (I’m not one) like Adobe Lightroom (with integrates with the full Photoshop program), but I think they have the same problem: A zillion images saved, but difficult to catalog for easy location and retrieval.

I’m about to move my blog from Blogger to a hosted-domain using WordPress and was hoping I could find a better “slideshow” widget than what Picasa offers, but it sounds like you’ve explored that extensively without success.

Cheers!

Dick Jordan
Dick Jordan´s last blog ..Travel News Update (6/4/10) from Tales Told From The Road

By: Zee

Zee — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:03:34 +0000

I thank you for your post. My organizational skills are being revamped right now because it was extremely stressful for me to hunt for my pictures and edit them because everything was just thrown into the folder of the month which the pictures were taken. That hunting and looooong editing time caused me to dread posting and that isn’t what I need in keeping my blog alive.

Now that I am getting ready to port my fledgling blog to a standalone dot com I have taken a different approach to my organization. All posts previously posted are boxed up as is in a folder marked for last year 2009. The ones I have yet to post for 2010 are all done by subject and placed in their individual folders. For example, I went to a BBQ place, loved it and took some pics of what I ate. Everything included with that shoot is in that folder instead of intermingled with restaurants I went to weeks before in the same month. SO, when I feel like posting about the BBQ place it is all set, ready to go with the JPGs and PSDs in the very same folder. Everything pertaining to XYZ BBQ place is in THAT folder. When 2010 ends all those pics in their folders for that year will be in the 2010 folder according to subject/restaurant. Thus far it has worked wonderfully for me.

This rethinking alone has removed so much of the burden of backing up, looking for, collecting, editing and posting because I am not going by date I am going by content. With your Oaxaca photos you could post by places you went during your trip there rather than by hard date and time. Do try the list your told us of “Cemeteries, Ceremonies, Markets, Food, Street Photos..etc” and see if that helps contain the chaos and boost your sanity. The Lord knows us photographers have a lot to think about and do and sweet organization skills makes the process so much smoother!
Zee´s last blog ..San Marco Goes Green