How do you organize your info?

[Adrian Bacon]

Do you use Evernote or something similar to organize your photo and project related information, questions and communication?

What is your system?

I keep ideas that I’ve not shot yet and related notes in a markdown file that I store on my Dropbox.

For stuff that I’ve shot/worked on, I assign a 10-12 digit unique identifier to each roll/sheet of film and write that down on the print file sleeve it’s stored in. I also digitize it into an Adobe DNG file as my digital master and pull that into Adobe Lightroom. The file name of the scan also contains the unique identifier, and it’s also embedded into the metadata of the DNG file. Once in LR, I add whatever other meta data I need to in order to uniquely identify the image (by subject, location, client, etc.), generate a new preview of the image with my Develop Module settings, then save the metadata and preview into the DNG so that it goes with the DNG and I can recover the info if I ever lose my LR catalog.

This makes finding stuff pretty easy as LR has some fairly functional facilities for managing your catalog. Once I’ve found an image that I need to do something with in terms of the physical item, I just reference the unique identifier, then go get it out of the archival binders that I use to store the sleeved material in. It’s in ascending order, so it’s pretty easy to just index into where the actual physical item is.

That’s for film stuff, for digital stuff I do the same thing, I just don’t have a physical source for it.

 

[Trail Images]

I photograph in MF & LF transparencies. I use Print File sleeves for storage using Pendiflex style ribbed hangers in file cabinets. To keep the data logged I use MS Excel. It's plenty flexible to make as many columns as you want with headers at the top to sort any column needed. To label each slide and each sheet I use Slide Label Pro III. I've used this system for over 20 years and seems to fit my needs.

 

[markbau]

There is no evidence that keeping good notes in a book or software program improves one's prints.

 

[Luckless]

There is no evidence that keeping good notes in a book or software program improves one's prints.

No, but I have pretty strong evidence that keeping good notes and a well organized catalogue makes it a lot easier to get accurate details and find what I'm looking for a decade later...

Thirty years from now, the photos I take in the next year will be just as good or bad as they're going to be regardless of whether or not I manage to file anything. However if I file them properly I can find what I might be looking for in seconds, vs possibly wasting hours of my time trying to track down something that I know I had...

Not to mention I find my journals and notes to be rather useful reflection and learning tools. Writing notes for the photo I take this weekend won't make this weekend's photos any better... But they stand a good chance of helping me make a better photo this time next year than I would without said notes.

 

[Trail Images]

There is no evidence that keeping good notes in a book or software program improves one's prints.

Could not agree more. However, the question was as I saw it....
How do you organize your info?

 

[jtk]

There is no evidence that keeping good notes in a book or software program improves one's prints.

That wasn't anything like the question. A skilled photographer might know that many important photographers, such as Weston and Adams, kept exhaustive notes.