Ive been digital for about 4 years and the conclusion I have come to talking/reading and listening to Podcast 2, is that there are many “obsessive” photographers out there. My thinking is that with digital, because there is effectively no cost, all photos taken are to be kept.
A year later people have thousands. Then the paranoia creeps in and the back up has to have a back up and what happens when technology changes and is a tera byte really adequate…?
It has the same feel that “youth” has when comparing how many music tracks they have ripped/pirated and put on their mp3 player, let alone are able to listen to – not necessarily the end point it seems to me.

Being ruthless in editing is a far better start than saving all the snaps because we can. What will people do with 50,000 snaps…when will they get looked at, edited and even printed?
As implied at the start, digital storage has all the appearance of OCD.

Paranoia – doesnt mean someone is not out to destroy your hard drive…

Final point – were we less worried in the days of albums and packets of photos in a draw?

Steve

I do not use any catalogue program. I organize and sort my photos myself each time I take them off the camera memory stick. The reason is simply because if you ever have to re-install your catalogue program (computer crash, hard drive upgrade etc.) you lose the catalogue. Your photographs are still there but the catalogue is merely a type of index and is lost when you re-install the program. I have tried saving the actual catalogue file and simply over writing the newly created one once the program is re-installed but it is seldom 100% successfull. Best advice is to organize and sort your photographs yourself as soon as you transferr them from your memory stick.

As for backup, that is an area that cannot be stressed enough. Even DVD’s have a limited shelf life. Obviously the more expensive ones last longer, the cheaper ones can fail in as little as 2 to 5 years. That is not to say DVD’s are not worth the time and trouble, they definately are but do not rely solely on them. I back up to my offsite virtual server, an external networked hard drive as well as my desktop storage drive. The photos that are most current and that I am working on I keep on both my external HD, laptop HD and desktop HD. Sounds like overkill but this way I can ensure that whatever happens I have well organized copies of both my RAW files and jpegs.

Love the audio clip, it is always great to sit back and listen while giving my eyes a rest!

FLICKR is good for storing photos.

I find Picasa a great quick way to catalogue, thus enabling me to import them into photoshop. I use an external hard drive to keep my photos safe. I have 2, one I continually update at home and the other I update but leave at work for safe keeping.You can also use Picasa to upload to their web site. There are plenty of free web sites to upload to for safe keeping.