Another Monday Mosaic and Archiving

1.vintage daisy, 2.broken, 3.lollipops in the window, 4.pretty papers, 5.crafty hands, 6.cradling the rain, 7.words&wallpaper

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So last Monday I gave you the basics about my photography--the equipment I use and a little bit about my process.  In the comments Dona (go check out her beautiful photography) asked about organizing and archiving.  Unfortunately I'm not a good person to ask about this.  Because I shoot in RAW my little laptop can't handle much more than a month's worth of photos at a time...and sometimes not even that much.  I have a DVD burner and at the beginning of every month I have to burn the previous month's images on to a DVD...or two...or three...depending on how many pictures I've taken throughout the month.  Now, in addition to this I also have to regularly transfer the photos from my portrait sessions as well.  These tend to be my largest files and often one photo shoot can fill an entire DVD.  I organize my DVDs into two categories--date (these are the pictures I take for myself throughout the month) and portrait sessions.  I try to keep the portrait session photos separate in order to find what I need more quickly.  I'm hoping that with time I'll be able to find a system that works a little better for me but until I have a computer with the disk space I need this will have to suffice.  It's annoying to burn DVDs as regularly as I do and I wish I had a system that was more effective and efficient but I'd rather give up the convenience to keep the quality of the RAW format. 

Since I am not a pro when it comes to archiving and organizing I would love any tips and advice you might have to offer.  Some of you who have been doing this a lot longer than I probably have a system that works a lot more efficiently than mine.  I would love to know how you archive and organize your images...especially if you shoot in RAW.   

Comments

[Georgia]

I am going to mimic everyone and say external hard drive all the way! we have a few, and they are sooooo worth it. A few times before we had them our computer died and we lost EVERYTHING!!!! It was awful... all the photo's of our first baby's birth... GONE!

So, yeah... get one, they are wonderous :)

xoxo

[Alissa]

Just came across your blog and I'm looking forward to touring. I just had to comment and give you a link to another favorite photographer of mine. She did a post back in April with details on her filing system. Thought you might like to see it.
http://www.acellisblog.com/2007/04/how-i-organize-my-image-files.html

[kim]

Hello Michelle ... I have tagged you.

[hel]

They are lovely.

And I loved the small lef-rain-drop-worlds.

Sometimes I can see a whole world in the eyes of my dogs.

I'm investigating a photo library to back-up what is on a external hard-drive.

[Sue Mannel]

Congrats on being in the magazine. I am not surprised by that at all!!!!

xoxo~

Sue

It's good to be back blogging!

[christina]

I LOVE this mosaic!

[colorsonmymind]

Oh love these are fabulous.

I have a laptop and an older computer. Where I download depends on the day/time so I started having real problems accessing the photos I wanted when I was looking for them.

I have since organized folders on our external hard drive but I really need to back up on dvd in case something happens to the hard drive. I am also going to check out the off site storage Joleen mentioned. That might be the easiest.

Also I store my pics in RAW, PS, Large JPEG to upload for prints, smaller jpeg for flickr/etsy and then tiny for my pendants. It definitely takes space and time but I can't figure a better way to do it.

Love your photos as always squirrel:)

love you too!

[megg]

I like the metaphor for you shooting in RAW - like somehow it is more open and real and honest than any other way - as that is how I see your pictures!! I have no advice, but just wanted to say how much I loved your pictures! (AND the last post with the raindrops - STUNNING!!!!)

xo

[joleen]

First of all, love this collage. I am begging you to create a photo book for me to buy. Please. :)

As for organizing and archiving. In my camera bag I keep a card reader and external hard drive. I have six 2 gig memory cards (my camera went all wonky with 4 gig) so Alex typically unloads, using my laptop, at shoots, sessions, and events. At home we move everything onto my husbands computer which I work on through the network connection. On his computer we've set up an off site backup, which is constantly running, through a company called Carbonite. For now, this is our backup. We keep everything organized online by year, month, date + title. Once we get low on space we'll start to burn the months onto DVDs and categorize + store by year. Hope this helps. :)

[daisies]

i so love your mosaics and that vintage daisy ~ heart!!

like everyone here has already said, i external hard drives and i back up on dvds because i'm paranoid and anal all at the same time. i also have a naming scheme and an accompanying database where i can easily find what i'm looking for ... and my film is in sleeves in binders, labeled and also in the database. its a scary world i live in ;-)

[jenica]

i am hearting your mosaic's. each one brings so much peace and joy to my soul. i love to see what you create. lovin' the raindrop pics posted below as well.

[angela]

i was just talking to a family friend this weekend about this very subject .he said external hard drive too. i've made the mistake of loading onto my computer and never burning. things are terribly slow and i've made a lot of work for myself.

[kim]

you definitely need a le cie external! you can store files and move it from computer to computer. I am dying to have time to read all your tips! (btw my external is full of floating photos ... none of them named properly ... archiving and organizing is also a problem for me ;)

[Kerstin]

Hi Michelle,

After reading your previous post with photography tips I am so glad you addressed the storage question. I've been avoiding shooting in RAW for the very same reason of limited capacity on my laptop.

I did get myself an external hard drive with 500GB the other day, but my main problem is DISCIPLINE when it comes to backing up. I am always waiting to have the perfect organizing system and THEN I'll back up.

Now that I take a lot more photos than I used to I find the processing of getting them from camera into computer and then sorting them by ... date? ... filename? ... occasion? ... tags/keywords? ... category? ... very time consuming. I use keywords for those photos that I upload to Flickr. But I keep changing my method every other week and now everything is all over the place and hard for me to find specific photos.

Apart from your photo shoots, how do you organize your pictures? Do they just go into date folders and then you remember when you took them? Or do you have another method?

I am no doubt overthinking this!

Take care,
Kerstin

[donaB]

Hi - thanks for taking on my topic, I guess an external HD is the way to go! I'm already backing up to CD and DVD, but I think I'd feel safer with a second backup in a different medium.

[susannah]

hey lil squirrel, i love this mosaic of images - so beautiful.. i have an external HD too, and really i should back up my images onto CDs as well as the HD. i've done some but not all... naughty sus! i'm liking the 2nd HD suggestion though.. hmmm.. xo

[Dreamy]

Hello:)
I would also suggest to get an external hard drive. They are very reasonable in price and you can store LOTS on them. I have 2 external hard drives (one for back up) and I can store about 300GB on each. On some you can store even more than that. You can then just connect the hard drive to your computer via an usb port.
Cheers:)

[sentient marrow]

Hello! I was passing through from megg's blog and wanted to comment on your question about storage (great photos, btw).
Anyway, my dh is a professional photog and even with a computer with lots of memory, he still doesn't store all of his photos on his hard drive.
What he does is buy external hard drives and places all of his raw files on them. He also backs up the files on the externalt drives to dvd just in case. I think he has to buy a new external hard drive every couple months to keep up with thte volume of work he does.
They aren't too expensive- less than $200, I think.

Hope this helps!