Long-eared Owl, Assiniboine Park Zoo. Photograph, 7 x 5 in. Copyright 2008, Tania Nault.
When you get home from your zoo trip, with your memory card chock full of photos, what do you do? Organise, organise, organise and back-up, back-up, back-up (or, if you’re reading from the United States: Organize, organize, organize and backup, backup, backup). The more photos you take, the more important organising and backing up your photographs becomes, because a great photo can’t help you make great wildlife art if you can’t find it.
There are two ways to organise photos: using folders or using photo management software, and I’m in the midst of making a transition between the two methods. When I first got my digital camera I don’t think I understood just how many photos I’d take – it didn’t take long before I was swimming in images. I started with a series of sub-folders under the My Pictures folder: one for personal images, one for reference photos, and one for photos of my art. I created futher sub-folders under those categories to make a logical folder structure. Well, logical to me, at least. For example, my Reference Photo folder is sub-divided by subject: “Mammals” is sub-divided into “Mammals-Wild” and “Mammals-Domestic”. “Mammals-Wild” is further sub-divided into “Exotics” and North American species folders. It makes perfect sense to me and I can find photos quite quickly, but another structure might make more sense to you: dividing by date of your reference trips, year and month, for example. Whatever works for you.
I’ve had Adobe Photoshop Elements on my system for some time, but until recently, have only ever made use of the photo editing features. I came across a series of tutorials on the About.com graphics software pages: Organize your Photos with Photoshop Elements 3 and I’ve been working my way through the series. I’m not sure yet if it will make finding/using my photos easier – maybe I’ll write another post when I’ve had more of a chance to work with the program.
Whatever your organisational method you, make sure you back-up your photos to an alternate media: CD, DVD, or external hard drive. For added security, make a copy to store off-site (away from your studio/home computer). You could also save your best/favourite images in an online digital storage service (like Photoshop Express) just make sure the one you choose doesn’t resize your images. Doing these things will ensure you can find, and if need be *shudder* restore, your reference photos when you need them.
