First things first: if I offered you $2500.00 for the rights to use your much-praised image of the upper-crested dingy-whomper, could you find it? Is it in a format that could be sent to me quickly? And what's the scientific name of the silly little thing?

Once upon a time I had something very similar happen and here were my answers:

No.

No.

Uh, dunno.

POOF! $2500.00 gone in a 2 minute phone call.

It was at that point, that bottom-of-the-barrel moment, that I came face-to-face with the horrible truth:

I'm organizationally challenged.

I know, I know... it's sad. Sad indeed. But, as with most intriguing stories it has a happy ending (and for those of you who watch Robot Chicken, please stop giggling because I said happy ending you sick little monkeys.)

The fact is that now I'm uber-organized, at least when it comes to my images. Now, let's have me say this up-front before we go too far: I could care less about the BRAND of what you use to get organized (or make images for that matter) because we're concerned with the MECHANICS of being organized. So don't get hung up on what software I use, what computer I use or what lenses I use (despite Canon being A-number-1) because YOU have to decide what works for YOU.

So, back to being organized as a starting point:

Let's say that Aunt Sally passes away (hey, it happens) and the family is gathering photos of her to make a collage at the viewing (although it is closed-casket since she expired bungee-jumping in New Zealand) and you know you have a great image of Aunt Sally racing her '67 Camaro at the local drag strip doing a wheelie... now where IS that photo?

Some sort of system for keeping you organized could save you the trauma of sitting at the viewing looking at all those icky boring photos of Aunt Sally cooking possum stew or gutting a road-kill armadillo for quesadillas knowing that there was a better image to remember her by, if you could only find it. It could be as simple as shoe boxes with the month/year written on them or CDs in a case with the month/date written on them. OR, you could have something a little more elaborate.



The image I loaded for you has 4 things I think are essential in keeping your images organized and ready for easy retrieval:

1. A VIEW of the image

2. A PATHWAY display for the image

3. A KEYWORD section

4. A DESCRIPTION section

We need a way to see the images, know exactly where the images are, see what words are used to describe the image and finally a short blurb about the image's subject. It sounds simple and it is, like brain surgery is easy if you know what you're doing.

There are lots of neat programs out there that will do these for you, some with a loads of gee-wiz go-fast gadgets and some as simple as simple gets but it doesn't matter what you use AS LONG AS YOU FIND A SYSTEM THAT WORKS FOR YOU AND YOU USE IT!

OK, I know your brain is about to explode so go get some sort of refreshing beverage and we'll carry on.

Go on, get something.

I think I shall have a small bowl of rosemary and olive oil Triscits and some tangy tahini hummus with a glass of shiraz 'cause we're out of beer but beer makes me fat(er) and I have to hike a mountain this fall but, oh my... I'm rambling.

Alright, back to organizational software. The goal is to be able to find image X when you need to find it, perhaps find it fast. If you're just getting started and money is tight, consider the software that comes with many digital cameras... for free. Canon products come with ZoomBrowser that has keyword and description features, Nikon's software does as well.

One of the best tools for your buck (or no-buck in this case) HAS to be IRFANVIEW v4.10. Pretty basic keywording / description capabilities but then it can open dang near every file format on the planet, re-size and change the format AND put them in a new file folder all at the same time.

A step above these are along the lines of the ACDSee products in various versions from pretty take to pretty intensive. If you're using editing software such as Photoshop thae are now also including what is called IPTC field support (more about that in a later blurb) so if you already have it, use it!

Then there's the big guns: Entensis Portfolio and iView MediaPro (now swallowed by the dark side and branded as Microsoft Expression Media). These purpose-built programs are the mainstay of professional photographers and agencies who have large volumes of images to maintain. Personally, I use iView MediaPro and can say that it is the best single orgizational investment I have ever made as it saves me loads of time (once I figured out how to integrate it into my workflow).

Now don't let the price of these big boys scare you. After all, time is money. Let's say your time is worth $50/hour (and really, it is!) and one of these programs saves you an hour a day. How many days a year do you work? What if it gets you the sale of the upper-crested dingy-whomper you have sitting around? Hey, now we're talking... think about it.

I leave you with this thought:

"Just remember; never be afraid to live your life on the edge... Now let's get home before your mother kills us."

Life Lessons by Homer Simpson

Let's try another one: the ability to put your finger (or cursor or whatever) on an image is the first key to finding SOMETHING to do with a ga-zillion images. It could be fun, it could be financially beneficial, God forbid it might even be both! So sit down and think about how you want to be able to find your own rendition of the upper-crested dingy-whomper when the moment presents itself.

Next subject: file naming for the orgizationally-challenged.

Cheers!

~James

This is the start of planned Thursday updates so you get a double-dose of my ranting this week.

Now we enter the sleek and sexy world of file naming.

Feel free to yawn.... One of life's necessary evils I suppose. Something you have to do to make everything flow smoothly later.

As I try to make clear, this is the way I do this, there are (maybe) better and (definately)worse ways as you well know. This naming convention works for me and is probably the 4th or 5th step in a loooonnnnggggggg process of getting to where I am today.

Image files come out of the camera with pretty bland and useless names:

IMG_8846 DSC_7826

Wow, that tells me a lot from looking at it. NOT! Worse off, if you shoot with any sort of volume you can easily start repeating file names. Not good. So what do you do?

I have a folder structure that is divided into subject areas and all the files within each sub-folder start with the subject code's prefix. Now these subject categories are the result of some serious high-level thinking on my part so if you don't immediately see the connection don't worry, it will come to you. Here it is:

Northern lights subject files start with NL_

Aviation, military subject files start with AVM_

And so forth. I come from the same kind of lofty thinkers that named a mountain with a flat top: Flattop Mountain. We're fart smellers, er... smart fellers.

So, I have a folder on its own drive called PHOTO_CATALOG (the underscores are a leftover from the days when you couldn't put a space in a folder name, back when we walked uphill to school (both ways) and fun was a coffee can full of plastic army men and a hole you dug in the backyard). Within this folder is a whole mess of sub-folders named for my subject categories.



In each folder is contained the files pertaining to that subject, prefixed with the subject code and finished with sequencial numbers. So, in the northern lights folder I will have:

nl_0001.tiff
nl_0002.tiff
nl_0003.tiff

So on and so on, seemingly ad infinitum. If I get a large number of images that warrant their own category I will make an additional folder but expanding it by one letter:

mm_ = mammals
mmb_ = mammals, bears
mmm_ = mammals, moose
mmz_ = mammals, zebras

This way, I can constantly expand my folder structure to allow for new subjects. Since I move every 2-3 years this comes in handy as there are things you never thought of photographing that will come into your viewfinder. Like eggs. Freerange chicken eggs. Mis-shapen, non-uniform, infinately-variable not-like-you-see-in-a-store eggs.

Yep. I made a calendar of 'em. Look HERE!.

So now you know a couple of things:

Default file names aren't real useful.
Organization is the key.
My way works for me and might work for you.

I'd like to leave you with another thought from the ethos:

There are three kinds of people in the world:
Those that can count and those that can't.

Till next Thursday when I talk about writing descriptions for you images (and why you should really give a hoot).

~James

I don't know about you, but I had a good time in the '80s. A really good time. I remember this one time, at band camp... nevermind. I blame that decade for my degrading memory capabilities; I killed off my surplus brains cells and a few that weren't so surplus. It has resulted in CRS syndrom: Can't Remember S&#t.

And this is as good a lead-in as you're going to get from me on the importance of writing comprehensive image descriptions. For me there's two kinds of item descriptions: as a replacement for writing little notes on the back of our personal images and as part of an information management strategy. We're going to tackle personal photos this week.

We're all getting older. Some of us are doing so gracefully, then there's the group I fall into. Grumpy old men. I mean, I hope when I get REALLY old that I'm like Walter Matthau in the movie Grumpy Old Men. He had grumpy down to an artform. The master. My idol. I digress, again. Apologies.

Because I CRS, I enter short lines into some images so that I can remember the name of a camp, a mountain pass or some other term when talking about my adventures with company. If I'm giving a talk on a certain location then I can review my images and have all those names at the tip of my tongue. Item descriptions can be used as simple memory joggers. Back when we made prints for our family albums we would write this information on the back; now we jot it down in the descriptions field.

EXAMPLE: This photo is obviously snow piling up on the roof of a birdhouse, that you can deduct from the image. Surely there's more to the story, right? Of course there is.



Right now I know that this is my SEE ROCK CITY birdhouse that my Mom bought me for my birthday in the back yard of a house I used to own in Anchorage, Alaska. I also know that this photo was taken on St. Patrick's Day 2002. I also know that this was the "perfect" storm that resulted in my yard getting 28 inches of snow in 17 hours. It was AWESOME. I also remember that my lovely wife was on some tiny island in the Aleutian Chain hopping Blackhawk rides back to Elmendorf AFB after participating in a military exercise.

The question is, how long will I remember this info? Should I write it down perhaps? Methinks so. Thus, description written for images is as follows:

See Rock City birdhouse with snow load from St. Patrick's Day '02 snowstorm Anchorage, AK, USA. Rec'd 28 inches of snow in one day. Jill TDY to Nikolski, hopping back in HH-60

That little blurb will jog the collective memories of both Jill and I and is enough to get us yapping to our yung-uns about the good old days.

Now, here's something that hits a little closer to home for me but is a good example of why I write item descriptions for my personal photographs (those taken for my own pleasure and not
"business" purposes):

A couple of years ago my Dad passed away and left me with a previously unknown cache of slides. A rather LARGE amount of slides, slides I never knew existed. Slides of deserts, the Far East, places I can't figure out their location. Images I never got to hear the stories about. So, I now have a ga-zillion amazing images to sort through and they are just incredible BUT I know nothing about them other than what I can deduce from the image itself. Take these two for instance:



If you know nothing about military aviation then this is a wrecked airplane and the story ends there. Luckily, I'm an airplane afficianado and instantly recognized the plane as an A-1E Skyraider, a Viet Nam era aircraft. With a bit of time and effort I was able to find out the whole story behind this aircraft, the man who flew it (into the condition seen) and the "paperwork" that resulted from it as well as the present location of the aircraft. For the whole story, click HERE to read about it on my blog. Suffice to say had I even had a date or a location my job would have been much easier.

My point is this: today it is so easy to create a TON of photos. At some point you will kick off into the wild blue yonder and leave those images behind. Will your heirs be left with a pile of images (ok, a CD/DVD/hard drive full I guess) wondering what the deal is with the funny birdhouse covered in snow, or will they be able to read the description and realize that this image was part of your life and it meant something to you, enough to photograph it? Wouldn't it be nice if they could know the rest of the story? (My apologies to Paul Harvey for hijacking his tagline.)

So, nothing elaborate when working with personal photos. Names of people, places, perhaps a date. Enough to jog your memory so you can share the story with those around you and pass along part of your history. As a mobile society we no longer regularly gather for family picnics where we used to tell the tales of Uncle Charlie petting the skunk thinking it was a kitty cat. Those stories are getting lost, we're losing our own personal history. Take the opportunity that images and image descriptions afford you to pass along YOUR history.

Next week we're working hard: image descriptions as part of an information management strategy

Last week I talked about describing your images for your own personal uses. This week I'm going to talk about doing the same but now we're aimed at the commercial market; photo buyers in particular.

Just to clarify, I include anyone who is searching for an image to license for any use as a photo buyer. Some are employed as professionals and can work for large magazines, advertising firms and the like. Some buyers are creative types who create objects for sale in the marketplace and look for images that suit their fancy. The end result is the same: people are looking for images and YOU have to figure out a way to connect with them. Image descriptions are one way and a foundational part to getting your ga-zillion images found, seen and hopefully purchased.

Let's say you're a travel writer doing a piece on alternative power solutions around the world. You Google around a bit and find there's a collection of wind turbines in England that you'd like to use and some searching finds three images, each image almost an exact copy of the other:

Each image has a description attached to it, as follows:

PHOTO #1 Wind mills

PHOTO #2 Wind turbins under blue sky.

PHOTO #3 Vestas V90 wind turbines on the North Pickenham Windfarm near Swaffham, Norfolk, England under a blue summer sky. The eight units can produce a combined 14.4 megawatts, enough to power 8052 average English homes for one year.

If you're picking an image to use in your article and the three images have no appreciable difference, which one would you choose? I would choose number three as the images are all the same but #3 gives me some information I was unaware of that I might incorporate into my piece. I might even look a little more closely at this artist's online portfolio as he (or she) has not only a good eye but a good eye for detail.

NOTE: Caption #1 is incorrect, they aren't wind mills but wind turbines. Wind mills grind corn/wheat into meal/flour where wind turbines turn a generator to create electricity. Caption #2 is mis-spelled.

I think of it as on part of my online customer service. Give your client more bang-for-their-buck without them even asking for it. Who are they going to look up the next time they need an image... perhaps it will be YOU!

So how did I come up with this description? Some time ago I was wandering through a used book shop and I came across a well-worn copy of "The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual" from 1987 and gladly forked over my $.50 to purchase it. Loaded with tons of information from the proper way to refer to a three-engine aeroplane made by Ford (the TriMotor of course) to the correct way implement to use ditto marks, there is a section in the back just for caption writers. Under the Photo Captions section are the Ten Tests for a Caption:

1. Is it complete?


2. Does it identify, fully and clearly?


3. Does it tell when?


4. Does it tell where?


5. Does it tell what's in the picture??


6. Does it have the names spelled correctly, with the proper name on the right person??


7. Is it specific??


8. Is it easy to read??


9. Have as many adjectives as possible been removed??


10. Does it suggest another picture??

When writing item descriptions for my stock image catalog, a stringer assignment for a newspaper or for a photo going into my library of overall images I try to follow these guidelines. Great images are one thing; being able to answer the questions that inevitably beg to be asked by the viewer can be the difference between the work becoming a purchase or something viewed and discarded.

Let's try an exercise to see how your image description skills are working. Below is an image that I want YOU to look at and then compose a description for. When you're done, click your mose button on the grey box below and drag it across to see how I described it.

Silver Elgin pocket watch on a brass and wood display stand. Manufactured in 1888 this Lancashire size 18s model has a 7-jewel movement and was number 52 of 1000 manufactured by the Elgin National Watch Company of Elgin, Illinois, USA. Commonly called a turnip watch they were most frequently worn with a chain to keep from being lost during a hard day's work.

So how'd you do? The information contained in my caption was found on the internet within 5 minutes of starting the search. If a watch collector is doing an article on Elgin watches from the latter-half of the 17th century and we both have similar photos, which image do you think will get the sale?

It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words but never forget that the 50-100 words you attach to your images might help you make a sale in the increasingly competitive field of stock photography.

Next week: keywording pt.1

Finally, the last of the organizational sections. We've organized our images so we can quickly locate them in some sort of software progeam, have assigned them some form of file name structure and have even gone so far as to give them snappy descriptions in case our "picture of a thousand words" needs just a few more to make the picture complete.

Now we're going to assign some keywords to our images in order to make getting connected with a photo buyer easier (if that's our goal) or finding them quickly in our own image database. And if you thought you were going to get out of this without doing some silly exercise then you just don't know me very well. Yet.

Let's pretend you're a new photo research intern and the Big XYZ Magazine Company. Your first assignment: locate a photo of a falcon in flight. Easy enough, you go to your friendly internet connection and log into the company's preferred image provider and type: falcon and air since that's where you find them in flight, right?

To your dismay, of the first 102 images (of over 700 results) fitting your search criteria, there IS one of a falcon (but not in flight) and the first falcon bird (as opposed to the Falcon jet fighter) in flight is number 97. How in the world are you ever going to get the photo your boss requires?

KEYWORDS CAN HELP!

Keywording is where you assign a set of terms to an image that pertain to what is contained in the photo. They don't have to be purely descriptive terms, you can also include suggested feelings or themes i.e. patriotism, solitude, strength, etc.

YOUR GOAL in keywording is to be able to get your image to come up in a search by someone looking for the photo you have. If you have a photo of a falcon in flight, you want to keyword it so it will show up when someone is looking for a photo of such. The tricky part is getting your images to show up as a relavent result in a search. Part of that is HOW the photo buyer searches, part of it is how YOU keyword your images.

Let's consider this image below:

This is a mature bald eagle in flight above Kachemak Bay in Alaska, USA on a crisp blue winter morning. We have enough info to get started with our keywords, I work from general to specific when I can:

animal bird raptor eagle "bald eagle" "Haliaeetus leucocephalus" wing feather beak claw sky Alaska Alaskan "Kachemak Bay" wild wilderness nature in-flight "in flight" fly flying flight freedom independeance "national symbol" USA American "United States of America" patriotic patriotism

I described what I saw, what parts are noticable, where I saw it, what it is doing and finally what themes it invokes. Your keywords don't have bto be only describing words, don't forget feelings or emotions. Abstract thoughts work well when used correctly. You may need to seperate your words with a comma depending on your software (or that of your stock agency) and words I want to keep together are included in quotes. I use singular words (i.e. wing) knowing that most software will automatically pluralize it, if your words has a funky pluralization then include it as well (i.e. calf, calves).

Now some folks will include very obvious keywords: sky, cloud, blue. In this image I haven't but you certainly could. Some stock sites even break keywords down into ranked categories: essential, main and comprehensive so there's a place you can run wild I guess. My preference is to error on the conservative side so as to not get my images included in a search that has nothing to do with my images (partly due to the way some people search for images). You do what you feel works best for you and adjust as you see fit (yes, you can adjust them to suit your needs).

Now, with any luck, should someone call you looking for your image of the upper-crested dingy-whomper it will be nothing more than a quick query from your hands (or mouse cursor I suppose).

So, next week we start off on a new tangent as to what you can do with a ga-zillion images: products! I'll take a single product and show you what tips and tricks I use to produce them as well as a small sampling of places where you can have your images put onto them for your own use or for sale to the general public.

Which product is featured next week?

I guess you'll have to tune in to see.

One of the most popular lines of products I offer through various internet vendors are images of military aircraft placed on ceramic mugs and steins. The question I often get when peopple see them at craft fairs or at my home studio is "how'd you do that?" and that's what we're talking about this week. To be more specific, we're talking about dye-sublimation and heat-transfer products and how to get the best look from your ga-zillion images.

Now I can tell that there's a couple of you out there that are getting wound up thinking I'm going to go into great detail about the manufacturing process to the point where you'd prefer having your eyes eaten out by rabid wombats. Rest assured that isn't going to happen (the great detail part, I have no real control over the wombats). But I do feel that if you know the basics behind HOW your product is made you can be a better salesperson at a vendor booth or talking to a potential merchant. Also note that I will not go into any sort of high-volume "roll-to-roll" discussions or the like. We're adhering to the keep-it-simple-stupid principle. So let's KISS:

Dye-sublimation heat-transfer printing is a process where ink is deposited onto a carrier medium (via a printer onto paper) and the ink affixed (by a mix of heat and pressure) to a reciever media (a coffee mug).

The above mugs are produced by CafePress, they handle all aspects of order taking, production and shipping.

So what are the things I need to look for when making a design for a dye-sub heat-transfer product?

1. Look for image specifications for each product they make. Do they have a template, or a listing of specs to make best use of the area on your product? Be sure you check for these, they can make your job much easier!

2. Order a sample before you offer your item for sale! I have found that many dye-sub heat-transfer processes end up with my products darker than intended. With three different manufacturers I've made tests then gone back and adjusted my available images to fit the way each produce an image (and each was a little off, but enough for me to justify the time involved to make individual adjustments). I only found this out by looking at a sample and honestly, they look great in my consultation/sales room.

3. Be aware of differences across substrates! Substrates is a fancy word for what you bond your image to. Your designs should all look similar if printed on similar substrates like ceramics (mugs, steins, tiles) but will likely look a little different if printed onto mousepads, magnets, etc. If you're not absolutely sure they will look as you want them to, order a sample! Have you detected a trend yet?

Next week in Products I'll show you how I modify existing templates to make the creation process faster. Faster means more products created per hour, more products means a much better chance of a sale from one of your ga-zillion images.

There are two phases to creating for me: creation and production. Creation is when I'm composing images, chasing down the right light or positioning myself to get that elusive subject in my viewfinder. It can also be when I'm at the computer creating designs for products. Production is when I've settled on a design and I now have to apply a design to any number of images in my catalog to get them "out there" for the public to view and purchase.

TEMPLATES are a way I get through the boring process of production as quickly as possible and back to creating images (which will later be used in production and on and on and on ad nauseum).

Simply put, a template is the basic framework for a product design. In the polaroid above there are elements that change and elements that remain static from one design to another. Everything that remains the same can be placed in the template and that alone can save you scads of time. Now you simply replace the image for each new design.

So how do you go about creating a template?

1. Decide what product you're designing for.
If you're product supplier has dimensions of the printable area of your product, even better! Set this area as the maximum size for your design in your image editing software. I'm one to use the entire area I'm allowed. This lets me get in my design as well as copyright information as well as a web address (nothing worse than someone asking where you got the cool mug and they can't tell you).

2. Decide what elements are static.
My mug design has the armed force service name as well as my copyright and web address as static elements. Those were created as seperate layers until I felt they looked as I wished and then they were transferred to my max-size template layout. DO NOT FORGET TO KEEP YOUR ELEMENTS JUST INSIDE THE MAX PRINTABLE AREA TO AVOID IMPORTANT PARTS BEING CUT OFF IN THE MANUFACTURING PROCESS!!!!!

3. Provide cut-outs for dynamic elements.
I determine the size of my photo elements and cut out an area in my template. This allows me to place my images underneath the template and position them exactly where I wish, knowing they will be within the template boundaries.

Notice the teal lines all over the template. The ones running around the edge are my max-print warning areas telling me that I'm close to running out of room. The others are there to show me where the center of the template is and guides to composition.

So, templates are pretty easy to create and they can save you loads of time. I can create a series of 5 templates for a single product and easily turn out hundreds of designs in a very short amount of time. Templates can easily be created for mugs, steins, t-shirts, calendars, posters, the list is endless.

Spend a little time looking at the products available to you from various product manufacturers and you'll see that with templates, the sky is the limit.

Please forgive the pause in postings, we have to re-locate our residence on short notice due to circumstances beyond our control. As quick as I can I will be up and running and posting more things to do with a ga-zillion images.

Kind regards,

~James