Image filing system and some Portraits

I have recently gotten a request from a magazine about images from a certain place here in Egypt. No problem I have plenty of images to send to the magazine to choose from. My biggest issue was to find the images on all my several external hard drives. I thought I had a good system but it turns out it is not so good so it took me a lot longer to find all the images that I knew that I had. So I have this morning started to make up a new system my issue that I am facing now is if I am going to continue my old system parallel to this new one which then means that I will have duplicates all over the place that will take up space that are quite precious to me… I am leaning towards to only use my new system. I hope it will work. The system I have now is according to year and month of when I have taken a picture but then you need to remember when you took an image. My new system that are far from all implemented or completely thought through, it will probably take me months to get it all done anyway it is based on categories. Such as a folder for; food and vegetables, Stockholm, Golf course names etc. so all images that have anything to do with the categories goes into that folder no matter when the image was taken so Stockholm for instance will have plenty of images from several different years since I go to Stockholm about once a year and take pictures every time. What do you think will this system work? I guess most of the time a client do not need an image from a certain year they just want an image of the place they are requesting.

Some images will of course be trickier to place in just one category and there is no point having duplicates (unless it is your back up of course!) Maybe that is when sub categories come in? You know when a picture can be thought of as fitting in two or more different categories such as an image of a date palm tree with dates on, it could be in the fruit or tree folder or in a golf folder since it is taken on a golf course. I will have to think about that one! I do think it would be good with subcategories though to make it easier and maybe fewer folders to see as a start. If I do folders per country but then I will have it tricky when it comes to golf courses since I have so many images of them from different countries. If I make a folder of golf courses then I can put it all in their but if I do countries then I will have to have a golf course folder as a sub category in all country folders which I guess there is nothing wrong with either… Let me know if you have any great insight into my new filing system or if you have another one that is idiot proof. I spoke to another photographer about how de does his filing; he had a system that he thought was very good well at least worked for him. I just thought that it was the most complicated one I had heard of so I will definitively not do what he does. I guess it is all down to making one that works for you personally and sticking to it.

I am already quite good at deleting images but I think I need to up my game a bit and become even better at it to save space. I save almost no images on my hard drive on the computer itself but still I got a worrying message the other day when I opened Aperture; that I had too little memory for it to work properly and that I was risking loosing images! Wow that was a wake up call so I straight away frantically tried to move images from the computer to different external hard drives. I did peek at the utilities on the computer and I was scarily low on memory not sure how that happened. I need to be better at keeping an eye on it that is for sure.

I recently helped a friend take some avatar images of her for an article that have been written about her for Living Abroad Magazine. So we both ventured out to take some lovely images of her for the editors to choose from here are a few of the ones we came up with.

Filing system, Sensor Loupe & Champagne on the Beach in Egypt.

I have this week started a new filing system with my images that I hope will prove to be a good and long lasting system. Cross your fingers please! For a photographer the number one thing is to have a good filing system where you easily can search and find your images quickly your income can depend on it. Since if you can’t deliver quickly I bet there is another photographer out there that can. So you can loose potential income if you do not have a good one. Now I am of course assuming that you already can take great photographs ;-)

Creative people in general are not people with order around them with paperwork etc. chaos seam to be more the norm and that is why it is so important with a good filing system and a Back UP System! Where maybe the latter is maybe the most important part in the soft copy era we live in.

Which reminds me I have to buy more external storage space! I'll have to put it on my purchase list together with some Dust Aid. I only have one strip left and they are so very good. So will have to stock up while I can. I do not know if they sell them here at all in Egypt so have to get some when I travel in a few weeks.

 I am also thinking of maybe getting a Visible Dust Loupe any of you that are using one and can tell me if you like it? Think it might be the thing I need to be able to see the dust specs easier on the sensor so that I easier can take them off. I just did a quick google search and found another brand Ohnar Loupe that also does the same thing it is slightly cheaper though. Wonder if it is just as good?

"Isn't it strange? We spend hundreds, maybe thousands, on a camera lens to achieve the ultimate sarpness. Then, when it comes to assessing the results, we're quite likely to use a £10 loupe with a plastic lens. The loupe is probably the most overlooked accessory in the photographer's armoury. A loupe is a lens. You wouldn't expect much from a camera lens with just one or two elements, nor should you expect much from a similarly constructed loupe. Achieving decent resolving power requires several elements or groups of elements, just as it does in a camera lens. And this costs money." http://www.kauserinternational.com/4xzoomloupereview.htm

I read this in a magazine and I believe its very true. I know I was thinking the same thing wow a loupe is expensive when I found out the prices of them..

Champagne Brunch on the beach!

This image is from yesterdays morning photo shoot. I was up early again taking pictures the sun was right off to my right side giving the champagne glasses a nice sparkle in them. I had to keep on swirling the glasses though to keep the Champagne bubbling  LOL. After the shoot I was lucky enough to get to drink what was in the glasses!!! Unfortunately it was only 7 Up with extra lemon so it was actually quite sweet and probably full of sand in them, it was quite windy even it doesn't look it on the images.