Introduction
Put yourself in this scenario, you have just received an e-mail about one of your online photos, the sender would like a hi-res copy for print (be it a competition entry/client/magazine/whatever), this is great news, but where did you put the original media??? If you’ve been taking a lot of photos for a while you could be wading through an awful lot of files or film to find one image, and that’s time that you either don’t have or could better spend on something else.
This is where Digital Asset Management (DAM) comes into its own. In this post I will describe the methods I use to store and catalogue my photographs in order that I can quickly locate the original media for any print or digital file. These methods add a very small initial overhead to storing your photos, but deliver an easily searched and cleverly indexed image catalogue.
For my purposes I use some software called Iview MediaPro, but Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, or any other photographic/media cataloguing software will work just as well. In order to use this method successfully you will need to have some of this software installed on your computer.
Organising your files
Cataloguing
What Now?
Conclusion
You now know how to effectively keep track of your photographs, so get to it, the sooner you start the better. If you have a backlog of photos to be catalogued it will be daunting, but you may find some gems you’d previously overlooked or forgotten about. Have peace of mind that you will always be able to find your original media.
My wife would like us to redecorate our living room, this is all OK with me as it’s starting to look a bit shabby after 5 years of abuse from our kids. The real bite is that she wants me to reduce my book collection, considerably.
Given that the majority of the books I’ve bought are Science Fiction, and complete series at that, where can I possibly expect to start? These books feel like a tangible part of my persona, choosing which to keep and which to discard will for all intents and purposes feel like editing out parts of my own psyche.
So perhaps I’m being a little over sensitive, but where would you start given the same predicament?
It’s my birthday today, please feel free to buy me a book
Thanks!
Yesterday was Fathers day here in the UK (and I guess in a lot of other places around the globe), I was awoken from a nice lie in by my kids bringing me a delicious breakfast in bed. After eating breakfast my kids gave me cards and 2 heavy presents which turned out to be The Americans by Robert Frank, and 26 Different Endings by Mark Power. It’s so easy to dismiss these occasional days as a way for the card industry to get fatter

© Ben Anderson
The day before I went out and shot some link for my parkour project — I really am a very lucky man.