I try to shoot a couple of local events every year and post the pictures up on my print fulfillment website for people to look at and buy, if they are so inclined. The above picture was purchased by Claudia in a card format shortly after the event (May 2007). A few days ago (April 2011), I received an email from her asking if I still had the picture.
A few years ago, you photographed my parents dog at the elmhurst pet parade. I ordered some note cards from you and would like to get more for my folks. They love the photo and have used all the cards but one. My 81 yr. old dad is in the hospital now and has the card in the window of his room. He shows it to all the nurses. I'm hoping you still have the file on this one...it's a daschund in a hot dog costume. Let me know if you can find it...you took a great photo and I know my folks would love to have more of the cards.
Thanks so much!
claudia
With about 1-2 hours of work, I was able to find the picture she was interested in (plus all the other pictures I had to the dog from the event) and with some more work was able to generate a 4x5.5 card for her (See below)
I tell this story for a couple of reasons. Perhaps and foremost, it highlights one of my themes about how I think about photographs. Yes, there is an immediate satisfaction of seeing the picture on your computer screen, but, and I feel this is very important, we can look at the picture at some future time and obtain a great deal of satisfaction, appreciation and understanding of our past. It is sad that so many pictures are never printed and those memories will be lost in time.
LESSON 1-Pictures are a very important to our memories and will enrich our lives, our children’s lives, our great grand children’s lives and beyond. There are very few things that have the potential to have such a profound impact. When I shoot, I try to visualize what might appeal to those future generations as well as the current one.
LESSON 2-Take the time to make prints of your important pictures. It is very easy to use services like Kodakgallery or Shutterfly. Not only will you get acceptable prints, but in uploading them for prints, you are also archiving your important pictures away from your home in case something happens.
For all of my pictures, I strive to maintain 4 copies of each picture.
COPY #1--This is my working copy where I will do all of my work
COPY #2--My mobile copy where I will occasionally do work when I am away from my main computer
COPY #3--Is my backup of my working copy
COPY #4--Is my archive copy (This copy is stored offsite)
I use Western Digital drives: Passport drives for mobile use, vanilla drives which I insert into a Drobo RAID system for my working files, and the various Studio drives from Western Digital as backups and archive drives. I use SuperDuper as my backup software.
LESSON 3-Take the time to make to back up your important digital pictures. I have lost a number of drives over the years and every hard drive will eventually fail. It is just a matter of time.
I have developed a systematic way of labeling every picture taken. I would guess that I have 200,000 picture files and that is a lot to remember and manage. For many years I number each picture according to the following approach. Each picture is numbered YYMMDDxxxx where YY is a two digit year number, MM is a two digit month number and DD is a two digit day number. xxxx is a sequential number between 0001 and 9999. the YYMMDD is the day that I actually did the shoot. If I do two shoots on a day, I will add a suffice , e.g., YYMMDDaxxxx or YYMMDDbxxxx WIth this approach, I don’t have to remember what name I applied to the picture. All I need to know is when I took the pictures. I manage a small Excel spreadsheet that lists YYMMDD and a description of the the shoot on that day. I then create folders on my drives that reflect this strategy. I will have one folder for each month of the year plus a miscellaneous folder for that year. Within each monthly folder, will be the individual shoot folders with the label YYMMDD.
LESSON 4-Take the time to develop a methodology for labeling your image files that does not depend on you remembering a particular name and make it systematic. This systematic approach allowed me to find the pictures relevant to this client although it was nearly four years later. Every picture should have a unique name!
Because of my systematic approach to archiving image files, I was able to put together 4x5.5 card for Claudia within 48 hours of her initial inquiry. And her 81 year old father will enjoy some fresh prints of his favorite dog!