I mentioned the settings available in your Nikon for file naming and sequence numbering in my previous article (see Workflow – The Beginning). That was only a preliminary shot across the bows. Naming your files in camera is a minor aspect – naming your files in the computer is a major aspect, of your digital workflow. That is my topic for this article – file management including naming structures, storage and – if there is enough space – catalog building.

I started, if you recall, with a hypothetical memory card full of image files and now I need to see how to get those files to a working environment, in a way that allows for easy retrieval and ongoing identification as simple as possible. The most important message for you at this stage is - whatever you do, whatever workflow you decide to use, be consistent.

You may be in an environment where need to work with other photographers, or with assistants, in which case everyone needs to have the same approach, the same workflow detail, otherwise your stock business will become a digital shambles. Of course, it may be just you and no one else. In either situation, discipline is essential.

While it might seem like an unnecessary step, I suggest you draw out your workflow steps and pin the result on the wall next to your computer. This diagram and notes will help remind you of what steps you need to follow. Even if it is just you, alone, this will be useful. If you have been away from your office for a month, for example, photographing wild animals in the middle of Botswana, the diagram will be a useful reminder of your workflow steps.

I will describe my approach, and the difficulties I have encountered. You can add this information to your learning curve and decide what you want to do.

The first step depends whether I am working away from base on an assignment or at my base, with my computer handy. I do not take a laptop with me when I am in the field although I may change that approach in 2007. If I am going to be away from base for more than two or three days, I carry two main and battery-powered passive storage devices (PSDs). I have 70 GB available on each device, enough for 35 cards each of 2 GB. At the end of each day I upload the cards that I have used through the day to both PSDs. Yes, I am paranoid.

I also keep cycling through my cards – I have 7 cards of 2 GB, and depending on the total images I take, I could end up with three copies. If I reach the end of the 7th card, I will re-format card #1, relying on the two PSDs for the images that were on the card. This process requires careful discipline. It is embarrassing to get half way through these process steps at night and forget which card you have uploaded to which storage device.

The downside of using PSDs is that I cannot view and check the images once I have taken the memory card out of the camera. There are larger devices that allow image viewing and of course I could take my laptop. (My reason for not taking my laptop is simple. The weight just adds too much to the total that I carry, especially if I am traveling by international airline. Remind me to tell you about the problems I encountered in October, traveling from Europe to Australia.)

Now I am back at base, I either have memory cards or PSDs ready to upload. If I am using a memory card, I upload the images via a SanDisk card reader, and if I have transferred all the images to the PSDs, I connect one of those devices using a USB port. OK, this is all computer-speak, and I hope you are staying with me. In either case the card or the PSD is visible in Windows Explorer. (Yes, this is all Microsoft. I am an entrenched Wintel user. I do not have an Apple computer so cannot draw comparisons).

The process of uploading files to my working environment is not complex. I use either Windows Explorer, Nikon View or IView MediaPro3. My objective is to get these images into a suitable directory on my computer, which I regard as more reliable for storage than either the memory cards or the PSDs. Backups and RAID devices are for a separate article, sometime.

While the upload might be straightforward (and I keep my fingers crossed that neither PSD or card are corrupt), we are on the edge of complexities.

The first question I need to resolve is where do I locate these new files?

I have created storage buckets – nested directories – that I use for the incoming RAW (NEF) files. The screen extract below shows the structure. The top level is the year, and I have a subdirectory for each significant date for which I have images. In some cases I store more than one day in a bucket. So I have RAW YYYY (where YYYY is the year – e.g., 2006) as the top level directory, and under that I have RAW YYMMDD (where YY is the last two digits of the year, MM is the month and DD is the day – e.g., 061231 which represents December 31, 2006). Because I have a large number of files in my PSD, I upload the complete set into a temporary working folder, and then allocate them to the smaller date-based buckets. Thus the oddity in the screen extract of D2X 2006 – this is a temporary folder and will be emptied and deleted when I complete processing 2006.

As soon as I have the files in their intended bucket, I then rename them to match. So in the RAW 070101 (January 1, 2007) bucket, you can see files that have been renamed from the original Nikon camera default.

I use a straightforward file naming convention. The structure is HINDMARSH YYMMDD Sequence number. YYMMDD matches the bucket, the sequence number is just to give a sequence based on date and time, and of course the file name contains my name. Remember, these files will appear on my web site, and may be sent to potential stock buyers. It will not matter if the sender details are lost – the file obviously comes from someone called ‘Hindmarsh’. Hopefully there are not too many of us taking stock travel images. YYMMDD gives me the bucket where the original file is stored, and the sequence number identifies the specific image. Smart, huh?

You may be stuttering into your coffee at this point. How does he know what the subject was, how does he know what the city was, how does he..?

Cataloging is the answer. Cataloging and key words. And that will be the subject of the next article in this digital image workflow series.

Previous, Workflow – The Beginning

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