May 19, 2009

tranference


as threads of that song run through my head i can see clearly now the rain is gone i'm enjoying the cooler weather (though it won't last long) and the glorious gold light on the lush and wild greens of the back "unclaimed" land.

i got up early to take the puglies to the vet - lizzie has an allergic relation (we think) and it's time for Mo's annual check up. though mo still struggles to be alpha dog when Pete's not around, lizzie has decided that she belongs to me. i guess she missed a girl around the house or is it she knows i'm a sucker for the jedi mind tricks and give treats indiscriminately. anyway - it's quiet today without them around.

i just watched ellen and one of the women playing blindfolded musical chairs shoved a granny off the tuffet. i like that ellen gave the granny a trip to hawaii. that's class (and probably liability but, i'm going to be positive today).

as i type this, i am tranferring all of my photographs [56 gigs] to an external hard drive that holds a terra byte. next i'm going to redo my lightroom so i can organize them better. i like kelby's plan for tagging and it makes sense to me. but at over 4,000 shots i'm thinking i may need to weed out the ones i will never touch again. how do you all handle that? do you keep all of the shots? do you delete all but the ones you like? is it a half and half thing?

my general way is the first run through is delete all that are unusable. then i go back through and try to be critical with them - are they level? composed decently? what is the artistic value of that shot - so on and so forth. even doing that, I typically shoot around 150 shots on any given project and delete about 30-50% of those. that leaves 75 shots times three years now. how did i end up with over 4,000 shots? have i edited that many shots? wow.

memorial say is this weekend - what are you doing to do to celebrate? we're doing the typical southern barbeque around here - ribs, beans, slaw, corn...

31 comments:

  1. 56 Gigs, wow. You shootin' RAW?

    Yeah, I go through occasionally and weed out. I find that my older shots I don't like as much as when I took them. It's tedious.

    Ribs, slaw, corn, yummmmm! Enjoy!! :)

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  2. Goodness me 56 Gigs!!!
    Being amateur, I am obviously has not shoot that much. However, as a computer engineer I heard external hard-drive is not as stable as DVD though.

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  3. Hi Char, thanks for visiting my blog yesterday. I love your shots of flowers at the Shakespeare gardens. That purple and red is so pretty together.

    I was just thinking this weekend about all the pictures I've taken over the last ten years of my family. OMGosh, I have boxes and boxes. I've been trying to get them into albums. I don't seem to know the art of getting rid of the less than best, but I sure need to learn it.

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  4. I've been keeping everything I shoot. Not sure why because I don't go back and use them. Maybe I feel like they're all my children.

    Your Memorial Day plans sound divine! I'm going to do spring cleaning for my weekend.

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  5. Yeah, it gets ridiculous! I've got about that many on my computer. I started a couple of years ago loading them onto flash drives to put into the safe in case of a fire, but that project got waylaid along with many others.

    I really need to go through mine and weed out right now.

    Got family coming in for the weekend. One night is lasagna. One night beans and cornbread and wilted lettuce salad from my garden. The big day will be smoked pork shoulder for pulled pork, grilled burgers and dogs, and typical picnic sides.

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  6. Ugh. The idea of having to reorganize all my photos makes my skin itch. I'm going to pretend i didn't read that.

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  7. we've loaded many photos onto an external hard drive but I'm with you as far as needing to go through and delete MANY....really, I don't need 50 pics of the same flower, right ?
    and my files are a mess and they need to re-tiltled and some merging needs to happen soon!

    I hear you as far as the work involved goes....it's at least a solid day of playing with photos and NOT doing anything else but that, right ?

    and kurt...I like the allergic reaction to all of it....it does make my skin itch, too !

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  8. i'm going through the same thing with my photos...weeding out over 2500 from my photoshop to an external hd. i have to wonder how i got that many to begin with....and why i let them build and build. i keep promising myself that if i ever get them cleaned out this time, i won't let it grow into this monster again.....we'll see ;-)

    yeah...memorial day here is pretty much the same...ribs or chicken and lots of bbq :)

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  9. no memorial day plans for me here. how 'bout i drive down to visit you and share in a southern bbq with you? i'd like that very much!

    i hope you have a fun one!

    i'm going to have to learn some of your methods for organizing my photos. i keep everything. i keep saying i will through and get rid of the yuck stuff, but i never do. if i ever do, it will take me days! :(

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  10. You busy girl you. Hmmm, food. Yup we're doing they same at the cabin.

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  11. Oh I am with you on the phot organization thing and I still have a ton to go through.,.it is so time consuming. As for memorial day weekend, I have a graduation, gonna try to make it to the park for Tango's thing and who knows what

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  12. I used to keep more pictures than I do now, but they're just for personal albums and such, not professional. I find that visually, the albums are more effective with less so keep only the best shots. Memorial Day weekend here means planting the tomato patch and zinnia garden, then a cookout. Enjoy!

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  13. Char,.... same as you, delete on first viewing after download, then go back and work on them,.. may delete a few more, but I know i have scads that I'll never use again,.. I seldom print anything anymore. I burn to cds. Memorial day weekend,...headed out to go camping for three days,.. leaving in about 32 hours,.. but who's counting, haha!

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  14. I know that's the next step, burning them off to DVDs for the double backup. But I thought that part would be more cost effect if I weed through them first. Man, it's a lot of work. And yes, who does need 50 shots of the same flower?? Can you say tedious?

    And yes, we should just all barbeque together.

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  15. i love it when ellen does the blindfolded game - it's so funny!

    this weekend justin and i are heading out to his dad's for a family party ... cookin' out by the lake.
    your celebration sounds delicious.

    remind me to come to the south asap.
    where would you suggest?

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  16. the photo thing is a constant battle for me. my friend and i talk about this all the time and he is a professional photographer and still doesn't have THE solution.
    i would love to go camping this weekend but the weather is so iffy with all the rain we've had. these cool evenings by the campfire would be heavenly at the campsite but I don't particularly like all the rain when camping plus it makes it hard to get a good fire going. a good old southern bbq sounds great.
    hmm maybe i move all my images to the 500G drive i bought several months ago. you have motivated me.

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  17. Wow, you have 4,000? I took 3,000 alone in Hawaii last summer. I'm HORRIBLE about editing my photos (as you can tell from my Flickr page). I can't decide which ones to trash. I know which ones are usually best, but I have a hard time permanently deleting files. The only ones I ever delete are totally screwed up pix, or ones that can't be saved. Otherwise, they all currently sit in iPhoto...and on cds...and on my PC...eesh.

    I didn't realize it was a holiday weekend til yesterday. I'm so out of it! I think I'll be doing more decorating/cleaning/etc. around the house, and trying to put that veggie garden in, I think :)

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  18. i am doing the same thing. i am unhappy though because my transfer of files (photos) to the external hard drive isn't organized. you can open them again with iphoto but i get nervous that i will lose what is existing. lightroom is daunting to say the least but i am almost ready to tackle it. reading the kelby book as well.

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  19. OK...I was so pissed when granny got shoved off the chair!!! So uncool. I thought that women should have gotten the boot! Anyway, I did giggle when they kept taking the chair away from her...lol.

    Good luck with the sorting. I am getting better at deleting photos. And after I lost a bunch this past winter due to a hard drive crash...I back up almost weekly!!

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  20. I keep way too much... but once my paintings are sold... these photos are all I have left. I too must buy an external hard drive... computer gets slowwww with too many!
    Ooooh your BBQ sounds divine... what shall I arrive... lol!
    ENJOY your day!
    Fifi

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  21. I don't envy your task! I have been worrying about disk space and organizing photos since I started my 365 earlier this year. It turns out that I usually take more like 100 shots a day than one. Or course, I delete a lot of them, but there are still many left to sort through. Happy organizing to you...

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  22. I have yet to figure out a way to properly organize without losing my mind, please let me know if you figure out a way to do this.

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  23. That song will be stuck in my head all day. Ah well, better than the one I had yesterday. Haha.

    My dad is a photographer and has roughly 30 years of photos. To save on space he now archives to DVDs and keeps albums of them for any photos he isn't currently using in his business. That way he's only storing what he needs. On the other hand if you're only using 56GB of 1TB then you can also just sort them into 2 main folders (the pics you'll probably want vs the one you won't look at as much) and not have to use DVDs or CDs. Good luck!

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  24. I DO try to weed them before I load them onto the computer... but I seriously need to weed the ones that made it onto my computer, too. ;) I typically have around 2000 that I have flagged as keepers, and probably three or four times as many again... And I desperately need an external hard drive.

    Yeah, grillin' here, too... enjoy your weekend! :)

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  25. boy that is a big project to catalogue all of those images. eke! but smart to do so. you will be busy with that for a while!

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  26. Lovely photo!

    Is there an external hard drive you recommend? I need to buy one asap!

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  27. I got a "my book" by western digital at best buy for $120 (a terrabyte). that's dirt cheap.

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  28. I don't have lightroom. I use windows folders by months for my pics and they're all on an external hard drive, which may be getting pretty full. Wish I had a better way. I file macro shots differently. I know it's weird but it works for me for now. When I want to find a pic, I have to try to remember the month when I took it. Oy.
    Saturday I am going to meet two blogger friends in NYC: Daryl from the M104 and Lauren of Mental Pause Mama. We've been writing to each other for about a year and a half now. I don't know why I am nervous!

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  29. love the glass and the the blooms Char ~what else would Memorial Day be without BBQ...yours sounds wonderful!
    organize? catalog? backup? mine are all over and I really have no system...i delete ALOT...there I confessed!

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  30. i have a bad habit of never deleting unless they're really nothing.

    but i also have a terabyte.

    and 20,000 photos. and counting.

    i'm probably gonna have to start deleting sometime in the near future.

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  31. Phew! You've got a big project ahead of you. As to Memorial Day, we're going on a picnic brunch with my parents. Then, to a AA ball game at our local (new and gorgeous) stadium. Finally, a family movie night to end wonderful holiday.

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i feel as if each comment was between us as we sat and sipped something warm....i love to hear what you're thinking.