Photographs and Memories

Thanks in large part to the efforts of my back seat photographer; I came home from my trip with about 2,000 pictures. Large volumes of pictures can be daunting to track. Having an organizational strategy before you leave for a trip will help you avoid a mess upon your return. I hope you will find some of my strategies useful.

I was traveling with a laptop, so I was able to download our two cameras every day. No matter how tired I was, the download and battery recharge was a days-end must do tasks. The only time I strayed from this where the final few days of the trip. But at that point, we were taking only a half dozen pictures a day.

I began organizing the pictures into trip day folders e.g. DAY1, DAY2. The flaws of this system quickly became obvious; I had to cross reference the location with the day. I switched to location folders: Ottawa, CA, OR. I also created subfolders for significant stops in those states: Redwoods, Crater Lake, Glacier. Glacier rated its own subfolder for Going to the Sun Road and Hungry Horse Dam. This system held up, I occasionally have to cross reference the pictures with the day, but for a 5 week trip, IÔÇÖm more interested in where the picture was taken then what day it was shot. Additionally, picture properties can reveal the date.



Selecting a detailed name for the photos also helps keep them organized. When downloading them, I selected pictures from one state and gave them a prefix e.g. WA, CA, SD. If it was a particularly notable road, I included that in the name too. E.g. WA27, CA199. This way if I want to create a grouping of pictures, say of curvy roads, I know where the shot is from. e.g.: WY14_001.jpg, CA199_004.jpg



Because I wanted to share my photos online, I needed to make smaller copies. I downloaded freeware editing software to do this in bulk. I like a 680 x 510 size for posting online. I added a suffix of _680 to the reduced size photos. The resulting picture name looks like this: SD-Black_Hills_001_640.jpg



I regret that I deleted most of my full size photos, keeping only the very best ones in full size. I also deleted pictures that where less than perfect. This proved to be a mistake. Making decisions on the quality of a picture is not a task for the road weary. I find myself looking for pictures from particular stops and I canÔÇÖt find them. I realize that I must have found the pictures to be sub par and I deleted them.


It doesnÔÇÖt matter if you are taking pictures on a day trip, or the trip of a life time, taking time to organize your photos will pay off in the long run when you want to share them with others, or just need to jog your own memory.

These are great! Btw work, birthdays, and bike repair, I can't really travel this summer, but it's really fun to see those landscapes, vistas and roadways; the 'small' memories that make m.c. touring so good for the soul. Sometimes vicarious is ok, too.
Thanx, Gail!

Nice tips, thank you...



This is pretty nice shot

Gail,

Welcome home! It was nice meeting you and yours in Wisconsin.

You're right about editing on the fly; it's a tricky proposition. Photography, like motorcycle riding, is something one is constantly learning. At least I am.

Great shots--I hope you'll share more of them.

photography

Thanks for the organizational tips and I enjoyed your photo essay very much.

I really enjoy photography, but I find the related computer software daunting. I've tried Nikon View, Olympus Camedia, and Photoshop Elements, and they all beat me up pretty good. My next application is going to be Google Picasa, and hopefully this will make storage and processing photos easier. Once I get the on site stuff sorted out, I will get a Smug Mug account.

Rinty

Another great help to to take pictures of highway signs and town signs. Since memories can be sketchy after several thousand pictures the location signs can help a lot.

When the pictures are sorted by time or name of file the signs fall into place to jog the memory. This is especially helpful when the shots are taken in foreign countries.

When in foreign countries be sure to change the time and date stamp inside the camera to fit the new time zone.

Thanks for sharing the photos.

If you're ambitious enough, Smugmug will allow you to associate a set of GPS coordinates with a photo. If you're fully anal retentive, you can keep a notebook with the GPS location and the file name. Our own BeerTeam has done this to wonderful effect on his Smugmug account.

I use iPhoto on my Mac, along with Smugmug to keep them organized. By using Smugmug uploader, you can transfer the titles and comments you've made in iPhoto to Smugmug. I maintain the entire collection on my Mac and build albums to organize them. I can upload the album directly and only include the photos I want up there. It's a very powerful and convenient pair of tools.

When I travel, I use a little drive that has 18GB of capacity. That'll hold about 3600 or so photos, which is more than enough capacity. I just stick the memory card in the gizmo and it copies them over. It's small enough to fit in my camera bag, at about the size of an iPod.

I've also found that carrying two cameras is helpful. Tina uses the point and shoot Canon, while I use the Nikon. Sequencing the photos can be a bit of a hassle, but sorting them by date created (be sure the date and time are set right on both cameras!) is very helpful. If you're halfway savvy with file management, you can rename the files so they sort in the order you'd like. If you're doing this in Windows, I like Total Commander for file management tasks. I haven't found a Mac equivalent yet, but to tell the truth, I haven't looked very hard.

I also never, ever delete photos on the camera. I've had many photos that appeared marginal when seen on a little tiny screen, but when viewed on a proper monitor and cropped judiciously, they've been gems.

Great suggestions, Gail!

Nice comments Gail

I am a recovering Windows person and was fighting many of the same challenges. This approach will work on both Mac and Windows. I am very similiar to the wanting to organize work flow and storage process. So I decided to go with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to do my management and developing. Allow me to explain...

I have started shooting in RAW instead of JPEG, what it means is that the file is not compressed. It also means that Windows and some Macs do not read the file natively so it needs to be converted. It also makes the file size much bigger. So I picked up a 4Gig card and an external USB hard drive. So I use Lightroom to both organize and convert the files.

Lightroom allows one to set up folders, rename files, and then there is lots of metadata. It is the metadata that is what I really like and use a bunch. (Other programs can do this as well I just like Lightroom) The Metadata contains lots and lots of data and one can put in lots of stuff in it. I figure rather then explain all the options that typically is contained in the typical Metadata sets I would list the ones I use typically

• Keyword
• Caption
• Location
• Date
• Title
• Rating
• Category

So what I have done is in Lightroom I will set a lot of the "common" metadata when I do the import, so that say I am importing all the pictures from the camera. I can set certain things to be loaded by default. Such as if I am taking pictures at the Rally, I will preset the Keyword to be "BMW MOA Rally" (there can be more than one keyword with a photo), the Location to be where I am, the Category to be motorcycle... well you get the idea.

Then I go the photos once they are downloaded I will go through and do some captions and more keywording. So I would put in a keyword for who is in the picture. Yup it is just a huge database.

Then I can export out the JPG to what ever size I want, I happen to do full size typically. I then upload the photos to Smugmug. Smugmug take care of the resizing and the nice gallery layout. Smugmug also will read the metadata and work with it.

So here is where the power of entering all the data comes into power. If I am looking for a picture, I can go to Lightroom and do searches and filters based on the various pieces of metadata. Or since Smugmug reads this information the same info is available on line.

Here is a brief sample

http://bradfordbenn.smugmug.com/keyword/
http://bradfordbenn.smugmug.com/keyword/dave+swider

Lots of this stuff is also available from other software packages, iPhoto does some of it, there is freeware... I just happen to like this approach.

Also you might want to check out the Foundation Card Project... http://www.bmwmoafoundation.org/fundraising/index.html

BradfordBenn said:

...I have started shooting in RAW instead of JPEG, what it means is that the file is not compressed. It also means that Windows and some Macs do not read the file natively so it needs to be converted. ...

Click to expand...

Brad, both Canon and Nikon have "codecs" available from their websites which will enable the OS to decode and display RAW images. For Windows Vista users shooting Nikon RAW, the location is: http://www.nikonimglib.com/nefcodec/index.html

For Canon shooters the location is: http://www.nikonimglib.com/nefcodec/index.html

You'll need to navigate to the particular Canon model.

I think SRAB's hints are great. Without some organization all those photos on the hard disk become impossible to find.

I doubt many can remember the pic details upon return from a tour.

Both of my digital cameras have an Audio Snap feature, a feature that allows me to record the picture details after every shot. Prior to that when I used a film camera, several of my pages in my Motorcycle Tour Log were dedicated to photo details in chart form (pic number: 1 to 24, date, pic details)

Details that I'll note:
Who is in the pic.
What is the pic of.
Where the pic was taken.
What direction (so that I can later look up what mountain range or whatever it is that I am looking at in the background.
GPS waypoint number (001, 002, etc) and later inserted within the pic details.

My folders have filenames such as 2007-08-(05-08) - Utah Trip Then within the folder, pics will be labelled: 001 - date; 001 - 2007-08-05, etc. Then in another chart I'll list the pic number, date and detailed description.

Sounds like a lot of work? That it is...been doing it for over 20 years.

Nothing I hate more than going to photo hosting sites and seeing nothing but pics and no captions. I don't waste my time much on those as they don't tell me a lot.

dancogan said:

Brad, both Canon and Nikon have "codecs" available from their websites which will enable the OS to decode and display RAW images. For Windows Vista users shooting Nikon RAW, the location is: http://www.nikonimglib.com/nefcodec/index.html

For Canon shooters the location is: http://www.nikonimglib.com/nefcodec/index.html

You'll need to navigate to the particular Canon model.

I think SRAB's hints are great. Without some organization all those photos on the hard disk become impossible to find.

Click to expand...

iPhoto will handle RAW files natively.

I shoot RAW when I think I'm going to need to manipulate the photos, but otherwise, I shoot as .jpg

There is also a GPS device from Sony for this purpose.



(click the picture for more information)

Donald_Duck said:

There is also a GPS device from Sony for this purpose.

Click to expand...

Neat! I see this as being a built-in feature in digital cameras within two years. I already have this capability with my HP iPaq 6945 Phone/PDA/Camera/GPS/Washer/Dryer/Stethoscope/Slingshot/Pizza Peel, but like most machines that do a lot of things, the iPaq does none of them particularly well.

If you have the time, check out the new release from Apple of the new iMac along with all the updated software including a completely new iPhoto . It's completely changed to address the challenges of keeping track and organizing your photos.

The video is over an hour long. but the part that talks about the new iPhoto starts at around 14 minutes into the video. Once loaded, you can move the pointer to advance it to the 14 minute mark and watch the part about i Photo.

Try here: Pretty amazing stuff !
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/r27842e/event/index.html?test=q1wa2sz3x

RAW Talk

You guys are right that one can do RAW natively, sometimes. iPhoto does not support the RAW version that my Canon uses.

Windows will display RAW and do thumbnails etc. But Windows does not do a conversion without another application.

They key is to find a system that works for you

You can use an ordinary GPS and your digtial shots as long as the two clocks are in
sync. There is a free software package that will allow you merge the track with your
images.