{"id":42932,"date":"2026-11-02T06:18:57","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T10:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=42932"},"modified":"2026-11-02T04:20:45","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:20:45","slug":"tip-jar-42-retention-and-cataloging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/11\/tip-jar-42-retention-and-cataloging\/","title":{"rendered":"Tip Jar 42: Retention and cataloging"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"screenshot
I will admit, this is the boring end of photography, and indeed, any kind of potentially money-making venture, but it’s necessary nonetheless, and perhaps I can assist in making it a little easier and less time-consuming, so it’s less boring for that. So let’s look at the seedy underside of such pursuits, which is the administration. While this is geared towards photography, some of it will translate into other genres.<\/p>\n

First, retention<\/strong>. We’ve already gone over maintaining secure backups<\/a>, but this deals with what<\/em> we’re backing up. You’ll have to season to taste, of course, but the primary takeaway is, don’t save anything you don’t absolutely have to. It’s easy to believe that we’ll need a selection of any given subject with subtle differences in angle or lighting or expression or whatever, and so keep seven out of nine frames, but this generally only takes up storage space – usually on a harddrive, but I have two file drawers full of slides and several binders of negatives from my film days, so it naturally depends on the media. And I’m the kind of person that retains things on the odd chance that they’ll be useful at some point in the future, not at all helped by those rare occasions when they actually prove so. Yet the vast bulk of what I have will never see any use whatsoever, even less so with esoteric or specific topics or behaviors. This blog itself has caused me to retain images that I normally would not have, since I use them to illustrate posts, but the chance of some scientific or academic publisher contacting me for detailed images of jagged ambush bugs is slim, and even if they did, they’d either only need the absolute best image that I have, or some specific trait that I never captured anyway (which has indeed happened.)<\/p>\n

So here’s the suggestion, a rather firm one:<\/strong> keep the absolute best<\/strong>, and let the others go. Don’t get hung up on potential, and don’t believe you’ll win the photographer’s lottery by being the only one having a clear frame of pollen from a four-o’clock flower. Be lean, be mean, and use that storage space for future good images. In the long run, it will save you time and effort in finding said images again, and in the other aspect which we’ll come to soon enough, that of cataloging.<\/p>\n

The other suggestion is, clean house<\/strong> from time to time, and this is a good winter project, especially when we have a little free time with holidays. There will be images that we were happy to get, five or ten years ago when first taken, that we’ve now surpassed and find not half as impressive as something we’ve captured since<\/em> then, and this is when we bid them adieu. It’s a little like we’re seeing them as if we just completed a shooting session and are doing that initial cull – if we can say, Nah, I’ve got better<\/em>, then toss them.<\/p>\n

\"slide
Each of these is a vertical slide page holding 20 slides, perhaps a third of which could be discarded now since I’ve captured far better images in digital<\/figcaption><\/figure>Since this can play havoc with our previous cataloging, however, it’s not a bad idea to put them into a separate folder temporarily, instead of simply deleting them. This way we have a complete list of what should be pulled from our records as well, so we don’t waste time looking for an image long-deleted. Once this part is done, then we can delete the entire folder.<\/p>\n

Now we come to cataloging<\/strong>. This will vary significantly depending on what kind of subjects we pursue and what uses they have, but it’s always a good idea to keep a searchable record of our images with necessary attendant info, because it’s a damn sight easier to go through a spreadsheet than it is image folders or slide sleeves. I’ve found this especially true with video clips, which don’t have handy little thumbnails to show us everything regardless of the program used to sort them. Admittedly, I have a background with spreadsheets and so I’m comfortable with the necessary info and how to search it, and it’s not a bad idea to become at least passingly familiar with what they can do. As an example, the primary info that I retain is species of course, both common and scientific names, date taken, location taken, and where they can be found now<\/em> (e.g.<\/em>, what folder or slide page.) And then anything in addition that may assist in specific pursuits or marketing – for a long time, I was maintaining both orientation (horizontal or vertical) and overall base color with the idea that this might assist in usage as a magazine cover – ask your grandparents what those were. With video now, it’s specific interactions or behavior, especially that which I was pleased to capture since it’s not commonly seen.<\/p>\n

\"video
A small section of the current video catalog and the info recorded<\/figcaption><\/figure>Your version will vary, partially depending on genre or subjects, partially on your potential (or realized) uses. For instance, knowing exactly where to find the model release can be paramount, or how to contact models, owners, or other legal requirements. For photojournalism or paid gigs, specific dates, locations, and events are important details and will help you many times over. Unlike the images themselves, here having more detail than immediately-deemed necessary only takes a few kilobytes of additional space, but can prove enormously useful later on.<\/p>\n

[A brief side note from when I was shooting weddings. I soon developed a habit of finding the wedding program and getting a good image of that, preferably at the beginning of a roll of film, aiming for something both artistic and evocative of the venue if possible. This could serve as a nice frontispiece for the album, but also served to pin down whose<\/em> wedding it was (and when it took place) in the bundle of negatives, of which I kept a single small print of this program attached. This made finding things again many times easier.]<\/p>\n

Listen, I get<\/em> it:<\/strong> sitting down and typing all these details up is incredibly tedious, and I personally can find many other things that ‘take precedent,’ like trimming my toenails. I’m way behind where I should be, but there’s no time like the present (except that I have a post to finish.) My advice is, set aside a particular time per week<\/em> to do this, put on a little soothing music or a podcast<\/a>, and just treat it as a chore like laundry or cleaning the litter box. Once you establish it as a routine habit, it’s easier to maintain and provides a sense of accomplishment (and even alleviation of guilt) when it’s done. The more often that it’s scheduled, the less that has to be done at any given time.<\/p>\n

Now, here are a couple of things I’m hashing out but haven’t yet solved. The first is, easily matching the common names to the scientific, because I use both in my writing, but also because more scientific or technical applications for said images rely on the scientific names instead, because there may be multiple common names, or regional variations, to say nothing of colloquial misinterpretations. I will have both names in the tags for posts from previous uses, but they’re not linked nor have any way of doing so, and so I often have to do a web search, thus I’m considering another small spreadsheet that retains both, linked. However, too often I have to do a web search anyway<\/em> because the scientific names change far too often, which I’ve ranted about before.<\/p>\n

The other is, I use the thumbnail program to manage images most times anyway, but of course this only has image numbers and camera settings, not species names. There are tags that can be appended, so I’m considering adding common and species name tags to the system and attaching these as I sort – this way, I can easily find all of the images I’ve captured of, for instance, basilica orbweavers<\/a>, or alternately determine if I actually have<\/em> photographed them before without relying on memory, and without cross-conferencing with a spreadsheet. More tedious recordkeeping, but I’ve already found several instances where it would have been handy, and that’s how one determines what methods and systems would work best for personal needs.<\/p>\n

On the cataloging topic overall, though, just do it – it will prove useful in the future, I guarantee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will admit, this is the boring end of photography, and indeed, any kind of potentially money-making venture, but it’s necessary nonetheless, and perhaps I can assist in making it a little easier and less time-consuming, so it’s less boring for that. So let’s look at the seedy underside of such pursuits, which is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[8938,8946,8945,8943,8942,8940,8941,8944,3705,8939],"class_list":["post-42932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo","category-reference","tag-cataloging","tag-easier-in-the-long-run","tag-efficiency","tag-filtering","tag-necessary-info","tag-only-the-best","tag-ruthless","tag-search","tag-sorting","tag-spreadsheet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42932"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42941,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42932\/revisions\/42941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}