Friday, December 30, 2011

Photo Organization and Storage

As you may remember, after a summer of hard work tutoring I treated myself to a new camera. I definitely have loved every second of having it, and I realize that I don't even know 1/10th of what it can really do. When I bought my camera, the Best Buy salesman kept telling Eric how he'd definitely be buying me a new lens, flash or some other camera part for Christmas. Besides being annoying, this guy obviously did not know me at all. My first camera gift would obviously be CAMERA BAGS! Well, and also a beautiful pink camera strap. Sorry, but are new flashes pink? I thought not. Yes, I do need 2 bags. One big one for traveling and days when I need multiple things and one tiny one that literally only fits the camera that I can just put over my shoulder and go. I'll post a picture of the new bags in the near future, right now I don't think Eric would enjoy waking up to the sound of me taking photos of my camera bag with my phone. I know, he is so unreasonable :)


Now that it's easier for me to actually have my camera with me at times, I have a re-obsession with it. Specifically, I want to learn how to use it. I recently pinned 31 Days to a Better Photo and have slowly started to read through these blog posts and learn a little bit. My first exploration was with shutter speed...


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Still have much, much more to learn about this one topic, but taking my camera off an automatic settings was the first step for me.


Another major goal I have during this break from work is to organize my photos a bit. Well, most importantly delete some. As of earlier this week I had 24,773 pictures that I have taken since I got my first digital camera Christmas 2002: 9 years ago! That is a LOT of pictures, and I know many of them could be deleted. I've already deleted about 1,000 pictures and many of those were completely dark, blurry or of something I clearly did not ever mean to take a picture of... like a table at a bar... or a wall? Since I started blogging I also have an absurd number of pictures of random food and God knows what else. I deleted many of these. I mean really, how many pictures of oatmeal and foam rolling does one really need to have? I still am not even close to done with this process. My next major target is to delete pictures that are of the exact same thing. Particularly since I got my new camera I have had a desire to take at least 7 photos of any given landscape, object, person etc. In the future, I plan to employ the tips in this article called, "Delete Ruthlessly," sent to me by another photo happy friend. At some point I will probably get to the point that I will need to store my photos somewhere other than right on my computer...but at least I can prolong this a bit.


So my question for you on this lovely Friday (man Friday always comes super fast when you don't have to work, huh?) is: Where on your computer do you store your photos? (or have you moved some off your computer?) Do you have them organized by date or do you have folders for different events/topics? Do you delete ruthlessly or are you guilty of possibly having a few blurry/all black/photos with heads cut off in your collection?



6 comments:

  1. I have all of my photos saved on my computer, but I also have a back-up hard drive just in case somethign ever happened to my computer! I have them organized by event/trip/child's name. I am pretty good about deleting blurry or unflattering photographs. ;) I still need to do something with my photos, though, like develop some family ones for the family photo wall I want to make this winter. And some of the pictures i took in the market in Paris to hang in my kitchen. And other shots of Paris for my bedroom as I STILL have wall space in that room, even though almost all of the pictures hanging in my entire previous condo are in there. The room is huge, so there is just so much wall space (which is not a bad problem to have).

    can't wait to see pics of your camera bags. And I agree - pink > flashes. ;) My friend Kyria did a 12 week photo challenge thing where she posted different techniques each week. I learned alot, I should send that post series to you because you could probably learn some things there about aperture and such. :)

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  2. im the same way with photos as you are... i just got my new cell phone (with a great camera on it) in november and i have over 500 photos! my camera must have over 5,000 haha. i keep them sorted by year, then month, then activities (random photos just stay within the months folder). i need to go through and delete for sure (and back up onto an external hard drive!)
    have you done the 365 project? i did it this year... http://sterling365project.blogspot.com/
    it was kinda fun to document the year :)

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  3. Yay for new cameras!!! I store mine on my computer as well as on MozyHome external site. I need to organize all mine too. I have them broken down my categories, but I need to name them all so they are easy to find. I'm so glad it's Friday! boo work ;)

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  4. My macbook has gotten a lot slower over the last two years and I think it's because I have SO MANY photos on it. They are all stored in folders all over the computer and I should really clean them off as well!

    I haven't been playing with my camera as much as I did recently. I should really get back into it because when you use the settings right you can get some amazing photos!

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  5. I keep all my photos in iPhoto! I thought I had a lot, but you DEFINITELY have me beat!!!

    I have been coveting a nice camera like that for a long time now, I think in 2012 I will make it happen, but I need to actually save for it, not just run out and buy it because I want it. lol

    Can't wait to learn through you while you figure out how to use more features on your camera!

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  6. I think I'll be getting a new camera sometime this year (at least I hope). I currently keep my photos stored in iPhoto, and I am one of those over-organizers who deletes EVERYTHING that I don't want! So mine are pretty darn organized, and titled :)
    Happy new year Kelly!

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