Organization & Shooting

[ChiSoxKeith]

Just wanted to throw out a little bit of advice....

First off, try and keep your pictures organized. Second, take more pictures.

We had to put our German Shepherd, Jake, down on Saturday morning. Saturday night I dove into my computer looking for all of the pictures I had of him, the process spilling over into early Sunday morning and then again in the afternoon. Trying to sift through the volume of shots was very difficult and in the end I was appalled to realize that I only had just over 100 pictures of him.

Prior to 2007 I really didn't have much of an organizational structure to my photo archives. Everything was backed up well, but I really didn't have much of a folder system like I do now. This is going to have to be my project for the winter, trying to put some kind of order the back catalog. Luckily I've started using Photoshop Elements 9 so that will be a big help - tagging photos and creating albums.

And as far as pictures go, I'll be taking more of them in 2011. Lots more of them. I'm going to try Project365 - getting my camera out every single day of the year and snapping some pictures. That's going to be my goal for 2011 - taking more shots, printing more shots, learning more about my gear, and hopefully getting a bit better along the way.

Going to build my self a cheap light tent, there are plenty of DIY plans online and I've already figured out how I'm going to put my own twist on it. If that goes well, I'll even try putting together a soft box.

 

[Experiment_626]

If that goes well, I'll even try putting together a soft box.

Have you seen this?

http://larryscheapshots.com/diy-projects/diy-larrys-speedlight-mounted-softbox

Larry Becker's blog is chock-full o' ideas for low-cost photographic accessories ...

Scott

 

[ChiSoxKeith]

Yes I had seen that one, but thanks for the link anyway!

 

[Groucho]

Just wanted to throw out a little bit of advice....

First off, try and keep your pictures organized. Second, take more pictures.

We had to put our German Shepherd, Jake, down on Saturday morning. Saturday night I dove into my computer looking for all of the pictures I had of him, the process spilling over into early Sunday morning and then again in the afternoon. Trying to sift through the volume of shots was very difficult and in the end I was appalled to realize that I only had just over 100 pictures of him.

Prior to 2007 I really didn't have much of an organizational structure to my photo archives. Everything was backed up well, but I really didn't have much of a folder system like I do now. This is going to have to be my project for the winter, trying to put some kind of order the back catalog. Luckily I've started using Photoshop Elements 9 so that will be a big help - tagging photos and creating albums.

And as far as pictures go, I'll be taking more of them in 2011. Lots more of them. I'm going to try Project365 - getting my camera out every single day of the year and snapping some pictures. That's going to be my goal for 2011 - taking more shots, printing more shots, learning more about my gear, and hopefully getting a bit better along the way.

Going to build my self a cheap light tent, there are plenty of DIY plans online and I've already figured out how I'm going to put my own twist on it. If that goes well, I'll even try putting together a soft box.

For organizing photos, the best bet is software designed for such a thing - Lightroom being the obvious example. Tagging all the photos takes a little bit of extra time but pays big dividends when you are looking for something specific. At a glance, you can see how many photos are tagged with any keyword and see all of them with a single click. You can also arrange your tags hierarchically - for example, I would tag our old cats with their name, which were under the cats keyword, which was under animals. (I'm lazy with our new cats; they just get "cat" for a keyword!)

This also means that folder structure isn't quite as important, at least not for your originals.

For a softbox, I built one from an old cat5e network cable box, with holes in the sides and top with translucent paper and a long piece of white paper inside. Easy and ridiculously cheap. The problem is that the kids like to poke holes in the translucent paper so it needs some repairs...!