On being a hoarder
I have started on another of my little projects.
This is one I have been meaning to tackle for some time but was a bit daunted at the scale of the task.
I just want to tidy up my photographs.
I have about ten thousand of the damned things and they are in a mess. Some are total crap where they are out of focus or are of something so bland I don’t even know what it is. Dozens [hundreds?] are duplicated because I once started categorising them by event such as a holiday or wedding or something, and made the enormous mistake of moving some and copying others, hence the number of duplicates.
Another little problem is that I have used different cameras so the file names can vary. Some start with PIC and others with IMG for example.
My first task is to back everything up. A mere 45Gb and it’s as well I’m not using Windoze which is tediously slow at copying stuff.
Next is to find duplicates [using ‘rdfind’. Again, thank you, Linux].
Then I have to find the crap – the experimental shots and almost identical shots of the same subject. How many photographs of Sandy and Penny do I really need?
My real problem is that I never delete anything. If I take a shite photograph I should delete it, but I don’t. I have no idea why. It’s the same with emails but at least I can block-delete them by sender or whatever.
Finally I will try to sort them or tag them to make finding stuff easier.
This all started because I was looking for a particular photograph – a rather nice one of our Sandy lying on the lawn enjoying the sun. Just behind her on a branch above her head is a young dove. The latter had hatched earlier and had become friends with Sandy who was a very gentle Rough Collie. The two of them used to enjoy the sun together in mutual companionship. I have searched through thousands and have revived memories of holidays and Grandkids so It’s not that bad a task.
I still haven’t found the one I’m looking for though.
What about the cat? You could put all the pictures of the cat on social media – everyone else does.
I could start a new trend and load up dozens of photographs of the dog?
If you can find them again.
I understand the not deleting photos thing, I’m the same. I think it’s because I come from the film era, where the cost of camera, negative and processing was such that a photo would, by definition, need to be important enough to warrant the expense.
Also, the few pictures we had from the past were precious because of their rarity, Grandparents, great grandparents etc. The older the picture the rarer they were.
Each photo taken is unique in the terms of subject, location and time, making it almost a sacred record of history. Deleting or destroying a photo is to remove that moment for eternity. A kind of murder if you will.
I don’t think I’m explaining myself that well, but if anyone has seen ‘shooting the past’ with Timothy Spall you’d have some idea of the power of a photo and why every single one has import.
I agree about the legacy of the film developing era. You could be right that it’s just an inherited instinct. Ah for the good old days of 24 exposure films!
I hadn’t come across “Shooting the past” before. That omission will be rectified! I like Timothy Spall [as an actor] – we recently viewed “The last bus”.
Looks like there are lots of us with an allergy to the delete button.
I’ve just upgrade to a QNAP NAS as part of my system upgrade. One of the tools on there is an AI photo managers which ‘looks’ at each picture and tags it with relevant info, cat, dog, mum, dad, I apparently has Facial Recognition in there too. Not used it yet as I’m still working through my to do list and the photos are not catalogued yet.
Now I understand there are other utilities out there that can do the same thing. Worth having a look.