Philosophy Culling and Curating

[John King]

Thanks John, I do need to try that program out. This is also partially storage management, as my hard drives are set up as separate drive letters, with different camera/for at folders on different drives, and I want to bring my better stuff together so it's faster and easier to make and keep backups.

Bring it ALL together on one drive. Use a backup program like SYNCBACK to COPY the errant folders, preferably to a drive that has no current images on it.

Once this has been done, then backup that entire folder onto another drive.

Delete NOTHING until you have quickly eyeballed all your images.

My folder naming system is described in detail here:

Post in thread 'FlipBuilder - Meta Data - Cataloging'

FlipBuilder - Meta Data - Cataloging

In trying not to repeat the problems inherent in cataloging thousands of negatives, I am looking for a way of storing a long description of a photo - beyond who and when I'd like to know why I took the pic (etc). Using only keywords is not sufficient. I'd like to know that whoever runs across...

www.mu-43.com

And my file naming convention is here:
Post in thread 'FlipBuilder - Meta Data - Cataloging'

FlipBuilder - Meta Data - Cataloging

In trying not to repeat the problems inherent in cataloging thousands of negatives, I am looking for a way of storing a long description of a photo - beyond who and when I'd like to know why I took the pic (etc). Using only keywords is not sufficient. I'd like to know that whoever runs across...

www.mu-43.com

General workflow described here:

Post in thread 'Image files managing'

Image files managing

Few years ago I witnessed a ransomware in action. Basically it accessed every directory where the user had rights to read and write and encrypted the files based on file extension. I have been adviced to use cloud services, but according to my experience, they can be affected by these types of...

www.mu-43.com

HTH.

 

[John King]

Further, you can use a program like AOMEI Partition management or like to repartition existing drives.

Do a long boot time CHKDSK on all drives and partitions before starting this process. i.e. do a surface test, not just a logical integrity test.

This might involve a process like:

1) Resize one partition to reduce free space (partition 1);

2) Add that space to a neighbouring partition (partition 2);

3) Move files from partition 1 to partition 2.

Repeat until partition 1 is empty.

Then add remaining partition 1 space to partition 2.

This necessarily involves both partitions being NTFS (for safety); and eyeballing the images copied across.

 

[agentlossing]

I've had a further thought for the photo libraries I have on my hard drives. I have pretty much always kept a folder system in Windows separated by either format or camera (for example, the GRIIIx and K-1 have their own folders, but my M4/3 gear is all in an M4/3 folder - that could change but who knows), then by year, then by month. Makes it easy enough to find what I am looking for. But the sheer preponderance of my photo collection has been a little overwhelming lately, so I'm trying to find a better way.

I am not one of those people who keeps every photo they shoot, but I do like to keep a lot of photos that I'm not specifically pleased with or interested in. The maybes, the ones which are redundant but slightly different versions or where composition or subject is just a bit different. If they're virtually the same, I delete the near-copies, but if there's enough of a difference I'll usually keep them. However, as the photos accumulate, it gets very hard to find what I want. I've been trying to look back through my photos to discern some trends or ideas that I may not consciously have, but I'm drowning in all of the "too interesting to delete, but not interesting enough to show off" photos.

So I think I'm going to go back through the folders within the parent folder (M4/3, K-1, etc.) and create a new folder, into which will go every single maybe image and all of the stuff that's not directly interesting to me but not quite a "delete." It won't have the tight arrangement of the monthly folders, but I can always sort by date. I think this will give me back a little sanity.

I didn't take to the idea of what I was calling a "slush pile" folder with the not-quite-delete images - it's too much work for what is essentially still unfinished culling.

Instead, I decided to just be a little less forgiving and delete more of the files where I don't see anything remarkable or worthwhile. I'm starting with the K-1 folders, because those files are the biggest. I have also realized that it's a lot easier to do once some more time has passed: I'm finding it easy enough to have the size of my monthly folders from 2023, so I'm going through those now (finishing up June).

Maybe I'll let my 2024 folders go mostly unculled till some more time has passed. This has been a good project in tandem with adding a backup: I got a good deal on some 256gb SD cards, so I figured why not set up an extra backup that's small and can easily travel around if I need it to.