You may have noticed that it's been a while since my last post; That's because I'm engaged in a project that is biblical in proportion, and will truly (re-)earn me my self-given sobriquet of "Ambitious Wench".
I'm consolidating 4 years of pictures into a new filing system.
Why? Because I've got a 1TB External Hard Drive (EHD) and two <300GB internal drives. The backup drive only has 12GB remaining free.
Ye gods. I remember remarking to my former lover in '96 "6 gigbyte hard drive! We could run a webserver!"
*cough* Yeah, I was that naive, once.
I've used 169GB on the EHD, so far.
Why am I doing this? It occurs to me that while I'm utterly nobody now, someday I might be somebody. I want my son to have my complete body of work, warts and all. I don't want to leave behind a mess for him to slog through. Hubris? Quite probably. I sincerely doubt that I'll be a post-mortem Ansel Adams. But hey, lots of starving artists have been chosen for greatness after they die. Also, there's a lot of information in these images that can be put to scientific use. We're headed toward the destruction of entire ecosystems, and the flora and fauna of the Sierra Nevada may change dramatically in the next century. My images may be part of a global record of "How Things Used To Be Before It All Went To Sh*t". I've got a picture of a
pika, and since that time I've not seen nor heard one. They may disappear completely from the Sierra Nevada because of global warming.
Add to this a need to ensure a complete (but not redundant) backup. Well, ok, redundant but in a good way--I need to be able to cull duplicate image files out, so that each backup will be as trim and lean as possible. Eventually I want two drive backups, and two (or more) gold DVD backup sets.
I want all the images tagged for easy searching; Location, subject, date, all of it. That's going to take serious time. "You want a picture of pomegranates? No problem. Here you go."
Here's what I've come up with so far; I'm moving pictures into one directory on the EHD. The system is date-based. EHD/Pictures/2005/2005.01/2005.01.01/(li
st of individual image files here).
I've got lots of duplicates, the result of not really understanding backups, nor having a dedicated file system in place. Right now I'm just sorting everything by date, into respective folders based on image file EXIF data. It's a bitch. For a while I was putting found duplicates in subfolders, e.g 2005.01.01/2005.01.01 Duplicates . Not gonna work very well when I cull those duplicates, based on file integrity, modifications, et cetera. Not easy comparing images and EXIF data between folders. So I'll go back, move duplicate images to the parent folder, renaming as needed.
Then it's culling time, deleting duplicates ruthlessly. Any modified images such as B&W conversions, f'rex, will go in a new subfolder. Once that's done, I'll begin the daunting task of tagging. That will prolly be a Herculean task in itself. I'll set a reasonable goal of X number of images to tag per day, but won't chastise myself if I don't meet it.
How am I doing, the truly geeky amongst my readers ask? I'm using the beta version of ACDSee Pro for Mac for the sorting by EXIF date data and culling of duplicates. Yes, by hand. In the snow. Uphill, both ways. And I'm grateful for the opportunity, dag-nabit. I'll be using Adobe LightRoom for batch tagging and exporting to backup. Not sure what I'll use to burn to CD.
This is a task of incremental iterations. First get them all into one place. Then cull and re-sort. Then tag, which entails more iterations--tag them all with Northern Hemisphere, Western Hemisphere, North America, USA, United States of America, America. Then California, CA, West Coast/Rhode Island, RI, New England...you get the picture, I'm sure. Then locations in more specific locations in descending proximity. Then the main subject of the image, plus descriptive stuff. Then dates. Some of this I can do in batches, some of it will be hand-done.
Not to worry, folks. I won't let it stop me from taking new pictures. More likely, though, as I run across oldies but goodies, I'll be posting them here, with a plea to add tags.
(cross-posted to
http://LittleRedTent.net/LRTblog)
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