DAM. Digital Asset Management. I don’t have it but I critically need it. It’s hell trying to determine where any of my photos really are. Despite sporadic attempts at bringing things under control, I’m still not very well organized.
I’ve read a lot of articles about the top ten things photographers would do if they had to start all over again and not a one has mentioned anything about photo organization AFTER the shooting and editing. Now what? At first, we only have few dozen images and then hundreds and it’s easy to find things when looking for them. That’s the attitude we start out with. But a photo organization system? Never occurred to me.
Over time they start to accumilate and then you change devices, copy these images to that other hard drive and then the year ends and a new one starts; and then the years go by. We keep taking pictures and these files pile up and then we realize that they really should be organized soon. By then it’s too late and overwhelming and also past time that this has to be done.
Since I don’t have my very own JARVIS artificial intelligence to sort, remove duplicates, purge bad images, organize by date, tag, and geotag then I’ll just have to do the damned thing myself.
Jarvis? Organize my archives please
Now that I have some time off I can relax, enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday while traveling and plan my approach. A new incentive has arisen: time. Currently is late November 2019 and a new decade is approaching. So I will organize the archives by decade and secure them into digital vault.
Archive 1970-2009
Archive 2010-2019
Archive 2020 and future
Only then can I begin to think about processing the keepers and organize them into prints and maybe even some books. Especially for my planned Daphne photo project.
Damn.