Thursday, September 20, 2007

Cleaning Up

I've been trying to clean up my computer files for the last several days. I have thousands upon thousands of pictures of flowers and nature related things that I have uploaded since I began blogging. I usually take pictures everyday and some days I will take about a hundred or more pictures, sometimes with more than one camera. So many of those are just taking up memory space on my computer. I mean, how many blurry pictures of pink tulips do I need to keep? Really, how many good pictures of pink tulips do I even need to keep? I think I might have a problem. I hope I'm not the only one who does this.
Anyway, I am trying to find a good way of organizing the pictures that I want to keep. I'd like a simple way to organize them so that I can easily refer back to picture records if I need to.

So far my folders just have things like: Front Garden, Back Garden, Zinnias, Ornamental Grass, Birds, Hummingbirds, Insects, Garden Projects, etc... I guess I do need to at least put the year on them so that next year I can start all over. Even those files are getting huge as I go through the dated picture folders and place them in the categories I want them in. Besides I will want to back those up when I finish organizing and there will be too many pictures from one file for the CD backup, especially for the front and back garden folders.

I was wondering how other garden bloggers and photographers organize their digital pictures. I also wonder if other people just delete the pictures once they use them. I wish I could just save the very best and delete those that are just so-so, but I just can't right now, probably because that would be most of them. I need a better system. Ideas anyone?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, Robin, because I take a lot of photos too. I organize mine by date, then by topic, if relevant. So my folder of a couple of days ago reads: 2007_09_18_Fall grasses.

I keep all my daily folders of photos in bigger folders organized by year.

I try to be ruthless in deleting photos that I don't use in my blog. I keep only the best ones, which are the ones I post anyway.

Since my photos are organized by date rather than subject, if I want to find a photo of, say, daffodils, I rely on Digging's search feature to locate my posts about daffodils. The date on the post tells me where to search through my photo files to locate the daffodil photos.

I'll be interested to hear how other prolific photographers stay organized.

Anonymous said...

I am also curious to know whether there is a real good and simple solution to keep all the photos. I belong to the sort of people who cannot delete "good" (=in my opinion nice) pictures as well not throw away good books! I'll soon have a problem with my thousands of pics ;-) !!!

Katie said...

I don't take as many pictures as you, but I use Google's Picasa to organize them all. When I download pictures, regardless of subject, I do so using the folder name YYYYMMDD, that way I know when I downloaded them. Using Picasa I make Albums and drag the pictures into appropriate places.

For pictures I want to link to, I also have a Flickr Pro account that I upload those pictures to. It gets a little tedious to tag and label every pic, so I only upload the ones I really want to use.

I also use the Picasa Web Albums feature to post them online, but I understand Flickr has almost the same thing, and as a Pro user -- no maximum!

Interested to see how other folks do it as well...organizing pics that is

Bek said...

Just general digitalpictures I store on the online picasa in albums depending on the topic. Gardening pictures get deleted from the memory card if I uploaded them to my blog - if needed I still can download them afterwards. Pictures not uploaded yet, are kept on the memorycard.

Mr. McGregor's Daughter said...

I break photos down into categories & by year as I download them from the camera. Then, at the end of the year, each file goes on a CD. Anything that is not frameworthy gets deleted, even if posted on the blog. It's good, though to keep on the computer standard pics of a bloom of each plant. E.g., I have a good closeup of Clematis Henryi that I'm keeping. Then I know that I need never take another closeup of an individual bloom again.

Unknown said...

I have the same problem, Robin. I try to be ruthless like Pam, but... in reality I can justify keeping a heck of a lot of photos. Just give me a few minutes to think up an excuse!

I have mine sorted by place (backyard, driveway bed, individual plants, etc.) and every picture is labeled with the month and year in the name, but I need to find a better system. I think that I may have to start burning some CDs to clear off my hard drive. Anything more than a year old should probably be "CD Archived."

OldRoses said...

I keep all of my photos, good, bad and indifferent. They are arranged by day, then by month, then by year. Makes it really handy to compare things year to year or month to month.

David (Snappy) said...

Hi Robin, As this year has gone on from when I started blogging in March after a lay off the amount of Photos I took increased.A large chunk of my Computers memory has photos on them.Once I have taken them I am loath to delete them.My problem is as my blog is quite driven by photos my blog photos are being stored on whatever blogger uses.Im up to 28% of the maximum.When Im upto 100% will I have to delete old posts from 2005?
The computer ones need storing somewhere as they take up so much room.Mine are organised by Date, or sometimes descriptive titles like Harlow Carr or Autumn flower show.
Its a useful Aide Memoire to have monthly photos, so you can look back, or even compare bloom dates.
I will link back to this Post. Thanks :)

Iowa Gardening Woman said...

I have 2 external hard drives with pictures that are more than two years old. I always have organized my pictures by folders named with the date of the upload to the computer (I usually do this once a week or more), but like you I take 100s of pictures and I know that most of them I do not need but I can't bear to part with them, I guess I need to buy more hard drives :)

Kylee Baumle said...

I have nothing to offer you here in the way of advice. Let's just say that I feel your pain. Big time.