So, just how do you cope with 20,000+ photos, slides & Digital Images?

An interesting question! I dare say some of you reading this will already have a system for saving and retrieving your valuable photographic collection but others of you may today be where I found myself around 2001 or 2002 after I had gone digital and then came to the realisation that I now had a collection spanning the 1970's to date and in three very different formats - negatives, slides and digital (actually five if you count the two different video formats I've used - yes, there is a good case to catalogue the video collection too!).

As I've now had a few enquiries from people as to how I handle my collection here, for what it's worth, is how I am tackling the task of putting my entire "stills" collection in to some sort of practical and easily usable order...

What to Record about each photo?

Rightly or wrongly I've only ever kept a track of some very basic information:

date, location, loco (or MU, coach etc) number(s)

...plus, where it warranted it, odd additional notes e.g.
tour name/organiser,
an unusual event or something of note,
very occasionally the train ID (e.g. 1S99 01.59 X to Y)
...etc etc

All the information was catalogued, film by film, in large hard-back "cash books" (using the film indexing as explained below). Later this information was transferred to Excel spreadsheets (one per decade) and, now, it's being transferred to a single Access database. The advantage of using a "proper" database is that the entire collection can be held within one database file which makes searching, filtering etc far easier and quicker.

The Negative Collection

My negative collection spans 1977 to 2000, primarily colour but I also had a few years when I experimented with Black & White, doing my own processing, printing etc. Now here I am very lucky - pretty well from day one I have had an indexing system for my collection. How it works was quite simple and explained using the following two examples:

77BI01-01 & 80C01-01A

The first two digits (77, 80) are the year
B = Black & White & C = Colour
(I added an I to signify a film that was taken on my original Instamatic camera as this was not 35mm format)

The two digits after the dash (& letter A, where applicable) correspond to the number on the negative strip.

All my negatives are stored in chronological/film order, mostly in custom-made folders but some (still to be scanned mainly) in a large box...but again all in chronological/film order). Almost every print has the ID on the back as well as the basic data of date, location and loco/MU/stock numbers.

The Slide Collection

My slide collection spans 1984 to 1990. The indexing follows the same format as negatives, using S for slide e.g.

84S01-01

OK, time to admit it, on slides I am not at all well organised and the collection is in disarray with the best kept together in a rough "slideshow" order and the rest...well, lets just say I'd prefer not to be challenged to find a particular slide in my collection! That said as I am beginning to scan my slide collection they are being put back into strict chronological/film order.

The Digital Collection

I went digital in 2000 and have employed five digital cameras to date. Now here's where things began to go a little wrong for me as each camera had a different way of naming each photo and, up to 2005, I just accepted the format. I began however to realise I really needed a consistent format for all time. After much thought I came up with (using the date I wrote this as the example);

20070203-001

The first four digits are the year, next two the month, last two before the dash being the day. After the dash I just number sequentially from 001 to whatever number I reach for that day (think my record in a single day so far is around 150 shots!). Saving in yyyy-mm-dd format ensures everything is displayed in strict chronological order when filtered by filename - 1977, 1978....2006, 2007 and, within each year, Jan, Feb....Nov, Dec and within that, in day order. On each day the order is 001, 002...etc

Since 2006 I have renamed the images to the above format upon downloading them from camera to pc, completely discarding the camera naming format.

I originally saved the digital images in a folder hierarchy by year then month. Since adopting the latest format I have a folder for each year only. I backed up the collection twice per year onto CD, most recently once per year to DVD so, whilst the images were still carrying the camera-given filename, the order is at least reasonable so long as you know the month a shot was taken.

Time once again to admit something else I let slip - that's the cataloguing of data with each image (date, location, numbers etc).
Um, quite simply, in the six years since I went digital I just haven't done it, relying largely on memory!!

Getting back to the date is not so much an issue as, so long as it was correctly set in the camera, this can be got from the image itself. As explained below, the cataloguing is now taking place as part of the creation of the single "photo database" which is my current driver to give me a consistent approach to the storage and handling the entire collection on a daily basis.

Scanning the Negative & Slide Collections

I began the scanning process several years ago and, broadly speaking, have scanned in strict chronological/film order beginning from my first 35mm film (80C01). The back is certainly broken on scanning my 35mm colour negative collection, I've made a start on slides but have yet to do any of the B&W collection.

I scan each negative/slide at 3600x2400 pixels (sometimes 3200x2400, occasionally smaller if the subject does not fill the negative/slide) and save this as a tiff file - at 25Mb this is equivalent to taking the photo on a 8 mega-pixel camera so I regard the tiff file as basically a true back-up of the negatives/slides for the case they should ever get lost, damaged or destroyed.

Everything burnt to DVD (or CD, as was) is done twice - one copy is my working copy and the other is the back-up...these are all held away from my home address to ensure, should the worst ever happen (flood, fire, a plague of CD/DVD-eating locusts passes through my street etc), I don't lose everything in one go.

Making Order from the Chaos...

If you've followed me so far then you'll now have an understanding for what I am working with - negatives in good order and mostly scanned, slides in chaos and, to a degree, the digital collection also in disorder. The scanning process on negatives and slides now brings the collection to a single consistent format - digital. So, I have now embarked on the final part of my plan to bring an overall consistency to my collection...

....to create a single "photo database"...

This "entity" consists, in my mind at least, of a folder hierarchy which is only "by year" (1977 to 2007 presently). Within that every file every image will be the same type (jpeg), same basic size (1632x1224 pixel) and its name will follow the digital image file format (e.g. 20070203-001,  20070203-002 etc). At the very top level sits the Access database which can be searched by date, location, vehicle number etc.

Progress towards the end-goal is now pretty straight-forward, though rather time-consuming due to the size of the collection. I set up a folder on my pc called "photo database" then below that a folder for each year (1977 to 2007 as presently). I then started an Access database and began to catalogue the information for each scan (from the Excel spreadsheet) - at the same time taking the original tiff file back off CD/DVD and converting it to a 1632x1224 (or 1632x1088) jpeg image. I also take the opportunity to set Adobe Photoshop loose on the image, playing with the colour, contrast, brightness, sharpness etc at the same time. Each image is then being saved using the new "digital" naming format but also keeping the older name as there are so many CDs & DVDs which I have no reason to re-burn (as I would have to do if I completely change the naming format). Ditto, I am pulling back off CD/DVD the digital images and cataloguing them, plus adding the new format names where applicable. The only thing I'm leaving is the original size where the digital image is less than 1632x1224 pixels (my early digital images are 1024x768 then I went to 1600x1200, 1632x1224 and, now, a whopping 3872x2592).

The task for "processing" each image in my collection therefore ends when;
(a) it is entered onto the Access database
(b) a jpeg file (up to 1632x1224) is saved into the year folder concerned in "photo database" on my pc.

At the present time (early February 2007) the total images that have competed the process stands at just a fraction under:

9,000

The "photo database" is thus becoming the single-point reference for my entire collection - it enables fast searching and the images are of a size that does not cause any real issue when e-mailing (even to a dial-up!). In the event someone wants a better quality image from me (e.g. for publishing) then I just go back to the CD/DVD containing the original and pull it off for them. The 9,000 images in it so far add up to 1.6Gb of file-space so, even when it's completed (not that it ever really will!) I expect it will also fit onto a DVD...for many years to come at any rate.

So, there you go - if you ever e-mail me and get a very rapid response which includes a relevant (or even totally irrelevant!) image attached, you'll know how I've managed to come up with it so quick. For any of you out there wrestling with how to manage your own collections I hope the above explanation may prove to be of some help to you....good luck!