A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING
Personally, I think I have a fairly average size archive of images for someone who, in part, makes their income through photography—just over 300,000 photographs. I’m not certain that number is fairly average, but I do work with clients that have far more than I do, which helps give me that impression. One client I work with has a catalog of over 5 million images. My point is that digital capture allows us to create a quantity of images in unprecedented numbers.
And whether you’re a so-called pro photographer or not, whether or not you have 5 million or 5,000 images, pixels today are free, as they say. We aren’t burdened with the cost of photo development, so we’re all taking more photographs. As a result, keeping them organized is a challenge like never before.
Once upon a time, we photographers had drawers or boxes filled with slides and negatives. We shot a lot less, and managing it all was simpler. Today, we have hard drives, and organizing it all—knowing how to properly wield the field of ever-evolving software, wrapping our heads around what metadata is, how best to keyword, what folder structure we should use, knowing when to star, flag or color label our images—can be a daunting task, to say the least. If I’m already speaking to you and hitting a nerve; if your folders on your hard drives are virtual dumping grounds; if
