Milestones and archives
Earlier today Magda posted the 3000th
Two friends, both readers of this site and enthusiastic photographers, are regular correspondents on topics that range far and wide, but which frequently touch on Backing Up. One, just today, writes:
“From what I can tell, you two are at opposite ends of the pack-rat
spectrum. What do you do about saving old photos? My iPhoto library
is over 25 GB and things are getting cumbersome. My little macbook
only has a 120 GB hard drive.”
Here’s what we do:
- Dump everything into iPhoto. We do this on two machines (desktop and laptop), which creates a de facto backup, though subsequent edits Magda (desktop) and I (laptop) do will not correspond.
- Delete obvious dogs, sometimes, but really not all that often. Okay, our library is full of shots of the inside of the camera bag. Jesus, and they’re all backed up all over the place, every one of them taking up 10 MB.
- Upload to Flickr the pictures we like the most, generally. In effect, Flickr replaces our obligation to cull in iPhoto, which further leads to an accruing mess of good and bad photos eternally taking up disc space/attention. In the manner of the serial denialist, I am happy to use Flickr as a backup of the photos I am too lazy to back up properly, and so, unlikely as it may seem today, it does concern me that one day Flickr could disappear or become compromised.
That’s it. Our so-called system is all but non-existent. There is a movement afoot to create a Platonic ideal of an iPhoto library consisting of both archival material and ever-changing new photos. For this task I am using the freeware iPhoto Library Manager to enable multiple libraries. This is a great thing; keep a small, manageable, portable library in your laptop and a master or archive library on an external disc. In theory, anyway. The problem with this system is that you have to manage it, and when I say ‘you’ I mean ’some human’, which is the weak link in our system to begin with.
I’d say (and my saying it does not mean that I actually do it myself) that the way to manage a large photo library is simple enough given a modicum of self-discipline:
- Delete in-camera the obvious dogs before dumping into a computer. Make a habit of turning the camera on and browsing in multi-thumbnail view to trash losers before you ever plug your camera in to the computer.
- Delete in iPhoto the pictures you know you are never going to use or want to look at again. One problem digital photography produces is the ability for non-pros to take 30 shots to get one keeper. Dump the 29 non-keepers.
- Establish a default library on an external disc and make it your archive. If disc space on a laptop is limited, manually add to a second library on that machine only the photos you know you want to work with immediately or will want to see frequently. If you ever miss anything, it’s safe and sound on the external drive.
- In general, I am not a big fan of backing up to DVD. (In fact, in my mind that is a technology that has become all but obsolete nearly as soon as it arose.) If I have to shuffle through multiple stacks of scratched-up plastic discs to find something, the photos are already lost.
- Look into iPhoto Diet, a freeware app that weeds out unnecessary multiple versions and so forth. I’ve used it a bit and frankly found it annoying and inadequate, but you get what you pay for and I am not ready to write it off completely pending a little more fooling around with it.
Other than the imperfect but (for us) currently adequate Flickr arrangement, we don’t have any experience with a backup-to-internet solution, but I’d be interested to hear from anyone who does.
The writer of the question above is highly conversant with tech of all kinds, and I doubt that any of what I’ve written above will be news, or even much help, to him. But he did ask, and he’s contemplating a move to a camera that will produce larger files even than those clogging up 25 GB of his disc drive.
So what advice would you give about managing photographs?
* Edited to add this note: Magda was unhappy about the wording of my reference to “super-secret private” photos, thinking it made us sound like basement pr0nographers, and has requested clarification: a handful of our photos are marked private pending Christmas.
While providing iPhoto resources, a link to FlickrExport should be included. This plugin triples the usefulness of iPhoto in my opinion.
How many paragraphs into this did you get before copying it from an email and pasting it into Wordpress?
My dream would be to accurately title and tag all my photos in iPhoto BEFORE uploading them to Flickr. I tend to do most of my Flickr tagging in the FlickrExport window, and then my tags don’t stick locally to aid in local searching. It’d also be nice to enslave a clone of myself and make him go back and tag all my old photos, but that technology just isn’t up to speed yet.
The “delete liberally and often” advice you give is excellent. If it ain’t good enough to upload to Flickr, delete it from the local library.
I’ll have to check out the Library Manager. Thanks for that. I agree that DVDs suck for backups.
I wish I was mysterious enough to have private photos hosted on Flickr. :-(
Comment by Erik R. — Wednesday 28 November 07 @ 23.01 MST+2.00
This is more or less the reply I sent the questioner, er, in question:
I have no idea what I am going to do but I suspect it will be something along the following lines:
-Keep a copy of everything at Flickr.
-Only actually save a small percentage of that on my hard drive (sorted via iphoto, which I just finally started using).
-Immediately and often back up said photos to the backup drive I was gifted with by Señor Packrat.*
-Learn to keep the bulk of photos, particularly the family/history/etsy ones, on the backup drive and off the macbook.
But oh holy hell yes DO delete the dogs.** I try to catch them on the camera before I download them to the computer. Even then, I have to force myself to actually delete them.
*This being sgazzetti, himself.
**But not the good photos of dogs.
Comment by jane — Wednesday 28 November 07 @ 23.13 MST+2.00
You’re right, Erik, that it’s borderline negligent to talk about photo management as it relates to iPhoto (or Aperture) and Flickr without mentioning the Export plugins. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve highly recommended them to people at various points along the computer/camera geek cline.
To answer your question, the arrival of your email and my wife’s posting of the 3000th picture just happened to coincide in a nice bit of synchronicity, so at the moment I began writing the post, I knew that your emailed question would provide an important element for it.
The mysteriousness of our private Flickr photos deals more with not wanting to ruin a Christmas surprise than with our being actually mysterious. It’s very rare indeed that we designate pictures as anything other than fully public.
Jane: funny, I read his email as addressing you as the packrat and me as the streamlined possessions-are-nothing zen monk. I may back up a lot, but I don’t actually keep much.
Comment by sgazzetti — Wednesday 28 November 07 @ 23.32 MST+2.00
That’s so funny that you both thought of each other as the packrat. I wish I had been as clever a troublemaker as to have intentionally left it vague.
In an attempt to build my mystique, I refuse to specify to whom I was referring.
I wonder if it was my own subconscious that produced the synchronicity of which you speak, since I saw that photo before asking and I’m not sure what made me think to ask about it. Either way, it’s cool being quoted in someone’s blog entry.
Comment by Erik R. — Wednesday 28 November 07 @ 23.42 MST+2.00
ekhm… nie mam sily czytac po angielsku o tej porze, ale… jaka Ty chuda jestes!;)
Comment by Kasia — Wednesday 28 November 07 @ 23.43 MST+2.00
Dude, you’re totally a packrat if you’ve got 14k photos stored … somewhere. I guess I could be considerd a packrat given how many photos I have at flickr and how many of them are crap. I hadn’t considered myself a photo packrat since I don’t also have the nearly 10k photos also stored on my computer and/or external drive.
So.
We are both packrats and monks simultaneously then. Packmonks.
(Thanks for fixing the special character.)
Speaking of all my many photos, I might never reach 10k if I start deleting the crap like I have been contemplating doing.
Comment by jane — Thursday 29 November 07 @ 00.03 MST+2.00
iPhoto this, iPhoto that… I’m Picasa-ing on the personal Windows machine, and iPhoto-ing on the G3 from work… there’s an old Ofoto account with all the great old photos untagged, there are the Picasa-ed locally tagged photos up to April 06, and the local Windows machine still has 30,000 untagged photos organized only by folders by date. Will my Picasa tags transfer to Flickr ones? Damned if I remember. I’m being hounded to tag all of the local photos by person, place, and event, but it’s frankly beyond me how I’m ever going to do it without several days devoted to nothing else.
You’re darned right about the synchronicity (and I do believe we learned that word synchronously, I might add, in the year 1983)â��I happen to be tearing my hair out over the photo overload as I write.
What advice would I give?
DON’T TAKE PICTURES.
Comment by SquamLoon — Thursday 29 November 07 @ 05.20 MST+2.00
Oh and what’s with the fricking automatic keeping of the originals in iPhoto? If I want to change it, I want to change it. I’ll Save As if I deem it necessary.
Comment by SquamLoon — Thursday 29 November 07 @ 05.22 MST+2.00
An interesting discussion already.
Erik: thanks for providing the impetus for this discussion.
Jane: nice coinage, and it neatly captures my ambivalence about stuff. I’m going to use it. Note that I said 14,000 photos taken, not saved; the cameras keep track of how many frames you shoot, but have no idea how many pictures you actually go stuffing into your digital shoebox.
SquamLoon: I feel your pain. Since moving to iPhoto 18 months ago things have gotten better, but there is still a rat’s nest of an “archive” full of precious things and utter crap. Working on multiple machines offers a neat backup solution but also introduces new complications (as does using multiple management/storage systems). I think the idea of iPhoto automatically saving originals is meant to be a step-saver and a way of protecting you from making irrecoverable mistakes with your precious pictures, but I agree that it can be a pain in the ass; iPhoto Diet claims to deal with this issue.
And yes, we did learn that word together in 1983, and from the insufferable Sting of all people, if I am not mistaken, though I think it was Karl Jung who coined it.
And yes, ceasing entirely to take pictures is probably what King Solomon would counsel.
Comment by sgazzetti — Thursday 29 November 07 @ 09.22 MST+2.00
I delete assiduously (although my wife likes to keep more than I do, especially photos of the kids). I save everything on the hard drive and back up on CD. I only post a fraction to flickr (the ones which, in my sad little mind, I imagine other people might be interested in seeing). I tag and geotag (except for anything which might give clues as to our address or the location of our children’s school/creche) as soon as I upload.
So far so good, although following an impending upgrade to a DSLR things might start to get tight…
Comment by simon — Thursday 29 November 07 @ 10.12 MST+2.00
It’s all about deleting. In-camera deletion is your first line of defense.
The DSLR thing can indeed add to the problem, especially if you’re tempted to go with the RAW + JPEG shooting option; that’ll fill a hard drive mighty fast.
Comment by sgazzetti — Thursday 29 November 07 @ 10.22 MST+2.00
“It’s all about deleting. In-camera deletion is your first line of defense.”
Heed this advice if nothing else.
Comment by Jane — Thursday 29 November 07 @ 17.33 MST+2.00
sgazzetti,
Thanks for this post esp. the Library Manager link. ever since the D40 iPhoto has crawled. (Do you use the free or pay version?) And delete!? I can’t get Anna to delete movies of the inside of her pocket.
We have all our photos on outboard disks, though neither file is backed up. Our iBook crawls when iPhoto is open due to the file size, so now everything goes through Graphic Converter, and into the Dig Photo folder.
Last time I asked, you hadn’t been using iPhoto. Now that I know you are, be ready for lots of help me questions.
JEF
Comment by JEF — Friday 30 November 07 @ 15.39 MST+2.00
JEF: Yeah, as noted, we only started using iPhoto recently — in fact, above I say 18 months ago, but it’s been even less than that, maybe only a year. Speaking of which, D40!? That is news to me. I remember you had been looking for ways to justify a new DSLR, but didn’t know you’d gone ahead.
I imagine that with iPhoto Manager you may want to start again in order to buy back some speed; that is, make your current library archival and start a new one to be the default. In fact, I don’t think there’s any limit to the number of separate libraries you can manage, so you could do Pies, Sullivan, Field Hockey, etc. as appropriate. Even a special library for all of Anna’s inside-of-pocket videos.
Finally, I’m surprised and more than a little sad that you guys don’t have a Flickr account. It’s one more lovely way of narrowing the ocean, and the free account is surprisingly robust. You should give it a try.
Comment by sgazzetti — Friday 30 November 07 @ 20.17 MST+2.00