Soccer Mom seeking Control

[mtpaper]

Hi folks -
I recognize many of your names from other boards & websites which I've frequented during my search for info.

I am not a professional photographer.  Nor am I the family's primary photographer.  I have minimal interest in fixing images (at this point in time).  I am, however, committed to organizing our images.  Including all my old heritage photos which I've scanned, and all 3500 our 35mm negatives which I paid my teen daughter to scan.

After extensive search & review during summer of '06, I commited to iMatch; as another poster said, it's very powerful but has a GUI only a mother could love.  It's way more than I need, but I love the flexibility with the heirarchal categories and other features.  I have close to 20,000 images (although some will be discarded).

But I'm still struggling with how to set-up the categories, as I see that many others struggle.  I've read thru the pertinent chapter from DAM book, and surfed endlessly.  And I find a lot of info - geared to photographers, and photo-journalists.  And yes, I can learn from some of this.  Sometimes I can say, "oh, well if a professional photographer does x-y-z, then I can relate that to what I need in the following manner."

But much of it does not address the needs of a soccer mom / family-historian.  Or is not transferable clearly enuf.

I have worked with relational databases, so that is not the issue.  I understand the importance of making my categories as clear and clean as possible, and avoiding duplication/confusion.

However, I need to see more examples of how other compulsive families organize their images... so I can learn from others, and adapt for my needs.  And I'm having a hard time finding any discussions or books or articles that address these specifics.

I LOVE the article titled Caption & Keywording Guidelines at the controlled vocabulary website.  But I need a little more hand-holding with it, to take it from a fabulous outline, to an implemented hierarchal category list.

I run into questions such as:
- recording that an image is ABOUT Mary, even though Mary is not in the image;
- recording concepts & moods (ie, images of Mary being a goofpot, or images showing my dh's organization compulsions); I think this is answer WHY we have the photo, but I'm looking for ideas on how general/specific to set this up
- recording whether an image is Candid v Posed, recording whether an image has 1 person, 2 people, Groups; do I put this info under my Who?  my What?  or a separate category of Generic Image Data?
- discussion of using Hierarchal Categories vs Keyword fields vs Setting up a Category called Keywords, with A-Z sub-categories for me to add keyword categories as I need them

Any suggestions where I can find more conversation about this from my point of view?  I've seen some discussions from amateurs, but usually they're from the point of view of amateur photographers (as opposed to professional photographers); they're needs are different from those of a professional mom who happens to have a lot of photos!

Yes, I know that there's no right and wrong way to do all this.  And yes, I know it's a matter of preference, for what works for me.  But nevertheless, I feel like I'm trying to re-invent the wheel - certainly there must be suggested methods available!

Thanks in advance -
Marion in Rochester

[peterkrogh]

Marion,
For my rather large collection of personal images, I will put in general keywords about an event.  So Maddy's birthday party will all be tagged with the word Maddy, even if Maddy is not in every picture. 

I suggest putting the location information in the IPTC location fields.

Tag the photos with any reference to events pictured.  (Karate demonstration, Christmas, Beach trip, etc)

Most importantly, I suggest putting in Ratings.  This will be extremely valuable over time.

I do not bother to put in those general keywords like concepts or moods. I'm much more likely to want to find all the images from Caldwell's house or from events he attended over time - and cross reference this with ratings - in order to create a collection of Caldwell images for a slideshow.

Think of how you are likely to want to search and group the images as you consider what information to create and record. What is the actual need?

Keep in mind that if you do some broad categorization, and a decent job with ratings,  you should be able to do more specialized searches easily as the need presents.  Save those searches for future use in other searches.

Peter

[ChrisTrauzzi]

...Maddy's birthday party will all be tagged with the word Maddy, even if Maddy is not in every picture....

Peter,

I'm sure that I'm missing something obvious here... but my simple (stupid?) question is... When you want to find your best photos of Maddy, what keyword(s) do you search on?  It would seem at this point that if you do include the word Maddy in all of the photos that are a related event, you lose the ability to narrow down to just the pictures that Maddy is in.

I would have thought to only list names when those people are in the photo, so that you can easily do a keyword search that is narrow to just an individual.

Thanks in advance.

-Chris

[peterkrogh]

Chris,
If I was looking for best pictures of Maddy, I would first filter on the keyword Maddy, and then cross reference with rating.

Once that is done, I would make a collection that is hand selected.  This collection would be called "Birthday Slideshow May 2007". This collection would then become one of the best places to search if I was looking for images to show on a future birthday, or for a holiday family slideshow.

A lot of this is about leveraging your time effectively.  I *could* go through all the images tagged with the word Maddy and remove the tag from, say, images from her softball team that do not include her, but that would not be a good use of my time.  Bulk keywords get me to the right neighborhood, but I have to do hand selection anyway for the purpose at hand.

These higher-level collections are the place where your most important evaluations are likely to reside.  Even cross-referencing Maddy with 3 Stars and greater is generally not going to get me to a perfect selection of images for any particular use.  Of necessity, I'll have to do hand selection. 

Make sense?
Peter

[ChrisTrauzzi]

Peter,

Thanks!  It definitely makes sense.  In my mind I am still holding on to the *perception* that there is a stronger benefit to limiting the use of people names to photos that they are in and using other keywords to describe the event in a meaningful way.  If I'm understanding your answer, the issue is the time it would take to hand code each photo with the name of each person in the photo and whether going forward that detailed keyword tagging is the most effective use of my time.

With my smaller collection (16,000 total photos over 5+ years), the keyword tagging of people does not seem that daunting of a task (since most of my photos are of animals and places I've traveled to, not people) -- but I am just getting started.  It will be interesting to see how things evolve for me over the next few weeks.

Cheers!
-Chris.

[mtpaper]

Thanks for the suggestions.

BTW, I've made a handy-dandy little chart for myself to keep in front of my keyboard, to help guide me for Ratings vs Labels, using your guidelines.  It would be a great tear-out card for your next book.

Marion