Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

Sure, I’ve tried this the hard way, too, and I ended up with a huge backlog of pictures with no real organization other than by date. Doesn’t work unless it’s easy.

First, let’s talk tools, then I’ll describe my workflow.

I’m a big fan of photographic metadata. The camera has no way to add meaning to the pictures—only you can do it. And if you take as many pictures as I do, doing it as you go is the only choice. So, having tools that make it easy to add tags, captions, and other info is essential.

On Windows, I like Picasa and Windows Digital Image Library (part of Digital Image Suite). Both of them store metadata in the photos themselves (so it’s not stuck in a proprietary database), they handle large numbers of photos without blinking, and they make tagging quite easy.

On the Mac, I use iView MediaPro. It’s less-friendly than iPhoto, but it has much more powerful tagging and scripting abilities, and supports my publishing automation more easily. Both iView and iPhoto can export metadata back to the files, but neither has an option to do this automatically, which is a huge pain.

My workflow for photographs is as barebones as I can make it:

1. import pix to a folder called “Incoming Pictures” on my computer. I do this with a CF card reader which lives in the PCMCIA slot of my Powerbook, but I used to do it with one attached to my Windows desktop. Putting the pictures there instead of directly into a dated hierarchy helps me get through all of them, as well as remembering which pictures I still need to make stories of (more on sets later).

2. trim the cruft. My first pass through the pictures just eliminates pictures that aren’t worth keeping. Sometimes, things are too blurry, sometimes the person blinked. Whatever it is, I’ve developed a brutal triage habit which eliminates about half of the pictures I take right up front. I never delete anything in the camera, and I mostly shoot little kids who move fast, so I end up with a lot of crap to delete. To judge blurriness, I usually have to look at the pictures at a large-ish size, so I also use this pass to grade the pictures (definitely part of the story, keeper, redundant, uninteresting) using my cataloging tool of choice.

3. tagging. My next step is to add keywords to all the pictures. I add keywords for the people in the pictures, and sometimes for the events or locations if they’re special. Again, I use cataloging tools that make this easy.

4. compose the story. Most of my pictures are of my kids, and they have a fan base that likes to keep track of the latest happenings. So, I usually end up telling one or two stories out of each import session. Each one will become a gallery on our website. I pick my favorite shots and add others to tell the story without overwhelming or boring the audience. Put ‘em in the right order, add captions (again, use cataloging tools that make this a snap).

5. upload & backup. I’ve created automation to backup my pictures, as well as uploading my stories to the website. Becuase the tags and captions are already in place, both the public gallery and the private backup will also keep this metadata I’ve worked so hard to create.