Russell McMahon wrote:
> Olin is saying that he has already overcome the problem ! - ie he has
> already produced a photo documenting system that meets his needs,
> albeit a 'work in progress'.

Yes, you seem to be the only one that actually understood this.  I finished
the part yesterday that allows releasing an arbitrary list of pictures from
the large pile of photos and automatically put them in an easily browsable
format with annotations, copyright information, thumbnails, etc.

> Spending the time on using the tools available
> is often the problem :-).

I've found that too.  Adding the documentation for each picture is tedious,
and I don't think there is any way around it.  It's not a user interface
software issue, although a decent GUI (this is one of the rare cases where a
GUI would be useful, I think) would make it a little easier.  Digging out
all the info and figuring out what you want to say for posterity takes time
no matter how it's eventually entered.

> I don't generally feel the need to record circumstance or location
> notes - I take enough photos that the sequence pretty much tells the
> tale with memory filling in the gaps.

Yes, *I* can generally remember details about my photographs or what's in
the collection.  If someone wants pictures of raccoons, I can remember that
I took a bunch in Mammoth Cave National Park in 1985.  But other people
wouldn't know that.  The best way to drive home the point about recording
picture details is to look at old family pictures from before you were born.
You will be asking lots of questions that were so obvious to the
photographer at the time that they didn't think of recording the
information.  Who is that next to Aunt Whatsit?  When was this picture
taken?  Who's house was that?

Imagine someone 100 years from now looking thru crazy old great uncle
Russell's pictures.  Think of speaking to him when you document your
photographs.  Or think of it as a scientific exercise.  You've taken a great
many pictures all around the world (far more than I have).  Some of them may
eventually be useful to document a particular place/time/object in ways that
are impossible to know now.

For example, someone was studying beavers in our area and happened to see my
nature pictures on my web site.  None of them are of beavers, but he asked
anyway thinking I might have more than I show.  It turns out I did have
several pictures of beaver dams, and one of them was one of the ones he was
studying from several years earlier.  I could remember taking the pictures
of the beaver dams, but in this case they would not have been useful without
good records of when they were taken.  Even a few years later I couldn't
remember whether that picture was from 1996 or 1999, which would have made a
significant difference to the researcher.

> What I do want is enough
> information to be able to locate shots subsequently.

But there are many retrieval scenarios where sequential isn't the key.  How
about finding all pictures containing Aunt Whatsit, or that were taken at a
particular place regardless of time, etc.


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