Well, while I do admit that I take a lot more exposures digitally than would be practical
if I were using film, there are some things to note
I do use a database, and most of these images never end up on my hard drive for any length
of time. For one thing, as I mentioned, my originals are burned to CD by the camera–
and those are indexed and archived by my software, with only thumbnails, keywords and location
held on-line. (one of my keywords being "trash") Periodically, as I put together enough images
of a given type, I will reassemble the best of the best, organize them according to content, and
burn them to higher capacity media, and adjust the db as necessary. The dB allows me to
do this painlessly. It also allows me to index, not just by exif-type info, but by keywords,
content and project or client number. This isn’t the painstaking process one might imagine
if you have good software and a logical bent. I can do large blocks of similar images in
seconds, then go back and refine things as necessary.
That said, I got vicious the other day and culled out lots of stuff– mostly experiments
that didn’t produce the results I wanted.
And as to using time profitably– I suspect my needs are different than most folks out there,
given what I do– so maybe I shouldn’t be considered a role model for anything. Right now,
part of the game plan is to develop and manage the sort of database discussed above
and work out best practices procedures for maintaining quality and streamlining work flow.
"Hecate" wrote in message
On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 09:54:30 GMT, "JP Kabala" wrote:
Thanks…. when I’m going to be out for more than a week, I pack an
external
hard drive
for storage—I can get VERY carried away with the camera, and it doesn’t take up much more
space than a paperback book– I was just wondering if I could pick up
some
speed by moving the
scratch files—but it looks like the answer is no.
Those 25 pictures I posted from the Selby Gardens? I took 300, and kept probably 250 of them.
And that was just a 2.5 hour stop! (and I still need to go back to get
the
red bromeliads and better
pics of the Orchid Buddha. I think I’ve got a good solution to the
low-light
conditions plus no
tripod restrictions– and this time I won’t try to change discs in the Orchid lab, and I’ll keep
the lenses in a warm pocket next to my body so they don’t fog up from the humidity–which is
nearly 100% ) I came back from Miami with 10 CD’s of photos –would have been 3 or 4
times that number if it hadn’t rained the first 3 days I was there.
And, of course, that’s the problem with digital photography. People become much less able to delete pictures as they go along. Just a philosophical point, but I wonder how many you would have kept if you’d been burning film and had to select them on a lightbox first, and then scan them in.? How many would actually be worth your while keeping? And then how many would be worth archiving in electronic form even if you kept the negs and transparencies? And, finally, if you’re going to shoot and keep at that rate, how are you going to find a particular picture without using a database, and how much time are you going to spend tediously entering each individual frame into that database until you have them all done?
Is digital photography making us less critical? And taking up more time in dealing with the results instead of that time being spent usefully taking more good quality images?
Just a few thoughts 🙂
—
Hecate
veni, vidi, relinqui