Tips >
2 - Organizing Your Photographs
Five Principles
The five principles below will guide your organizing.
#1 - Devise a Workflow
Use the suggestions below to devise a workflow.
Experiment with the workflow.
Don't immediately use the workflow on all of your photographs.
Refine the workflow with a few downloads from your camera.
Then, apply the workflow to your older photographs.
#2 - Use the Passage of Time
The passage of time makes editing easier and more effective.
At first, nibble on your photographs like a guppy.
After the passage of more time, chomp like a piranha.
Garry Winogrand used the passage of time to edit.
Photography editor Mason Resnick took a workshop with the street
photographer.
He [Garry Winogrand] never developed
film right after shooting it.
He deliberately waited a year or two,
so he would have virtually no memory of the act of taking an individual
photograph.
This, he claimed made it easier for
him to approach his contact sheets more critically.
"If I was in a good mood when I was
shooting one day, then developed the film right away," he told us,
I might choose a picture because I remember how good I felt when
I took it, not necessarily because it was a great shot.
You make better choices if you approach
your contact sheets cold, separating the editing from the picture
taking as much as possible.1
The emotional charge of taking the photograph fades with time.
You need to use emotion for judgment.
For example, see
Descartes'
Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain by
Antonio R. Damasio.
However, a fading of some of the emotion may allow cognition
to enter the editing debate as well.
#3 - Sorting Versus Deleting
Think sorting rather than deleting.
Many photographers delete only the obvious clinkers.
Instead of deleting most of your photographs, sort them into
different levels of quality.
#4 - Retrieve Via Folders and/or Tags
How do you find a photograph among the many that you have on
your computer?
In the past, photographers had to rely on a hierarchy of
folders to find a photograph.
For example, let's say you were looking for a photograph of La Jaconde at the Louvre.
You would travel through a series of folders to find the
photograph.
Trips > Paris > 2009 > Louvre
Many programs for organizing photographs now allow you to add tags
or keywords to each photograph.
So, when you download the photographs from your next trip,
you may add tags, such as Paris, 2010, and art.
By adding tags, there's less need, or no need, to create a
hierarchy of folders.
So, consider using:
• Tags as your only retrieval method.
• A combination of folders and tags.
#5 - Your Photographs Are Not You
Many photographers berate themselves as they look at their photographs.
If you do so, think of your work as being your children.
Yes, your photographic children contain parts of you, but they're
also separate from you.
Don't abuse your photographic children.
They're just children that need some boundaries and limits.
Next, we'll look at the criteria you can use for
organizing your
photographs
1 Resnick, M. (1988, July). Coffee and workprints: A workshop
with Garry Winogrand. Modern Photography,
http://www.photogs.com/bwworld/winogrand.html.
