How do you organize your photography resources?

[crimbfighter]

I've noticed as I go along in learning about photography, I tend acquire a larger and larger database of resources. They range from links to YouTube videos on Photoshop techniques, to downloaded PDF files with tips, tricks and advise, names of books, ect. I'm finding as the quantity of resources grows, I'm having a harder and harder time remembering where I put that bookmark, or the name of that author I wanted to research, or what the name of that technique was I wanted to try.

The system I have in place right now, is fairly low tech. I keep a couple different bookmark folders in my browser, such as "Photography Notes" or "Photoshop Techniques". I also have a folder on my C: drive to act as a catch all for downloaded content.

I know the issue of organizing resources is as old as time, but I'm wondering what others on here do to keep their masses of information organized, searchable and maintained in a manor keeping it a useful database of photography information.

Do others use a similar model of grouping seemingly relevant things?

I'd like to hear examples of your organizational skills/systems, in hopes of finding a better system to help me organize and maintain a useful database of information.

So, lay it on me!

 

[TexJoachim]

Diigo - Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Online Bookmarking and Annotation, Personal Learning Network.


Regards,

Joe

 

[ann]

Thanks Joe for posting this, however, i am not sure how it all works.

To the OP, it does get out of hand. RIght now I am rebuilding my information as I had serious computer issues last week (too much drama to go into). GIves me the opportunity to re-organize.:x

 

[Overread]

I tend to just dump the links I find into a bookmark folder for my photography stuff. I tend to break it up a little to give each link a subject folder (eg editing; shooting; products etc...). However with the internet it is also good to go through the list every so often. Links change and some websites also die or slip into a lack of updating.

I think that for text based info it is worth considering sorting out the best and printing them off or at least copying the data to a word file. That at least keeps the info safe should the site shift to a very different webaddress or be taken down.

 

[KevinPutman]

Make tons and tons of different folders, and categorize each of them.
I used to do a lot of Graphic Design stuff, (Had over 10 gigs of resources on my computer).
I would make a folder for each large topic, then other folders inside for smaller topics/branches. I.e Photo Stocks> Models> Men/Women/Kids.
As for bookmarks, I'm sure you can find a way to do the same thing through the use of bookmark folders, depending on your browsers. Links>Tutorials>etc/etc/etc

 

[TexJoachim]

Thanks Joe for posting this, however, i am not sure how it all works.

It's an online bookmark database where you can save links with meaningful tags. Imagine for example that you find a cool article "This is how it is done in [X]". You want to save a link to it and at the same time make sure to be able to find it again. So instead of saving it to your bookmarks into some folder (Photo/howtos/great/X/...) you save it with tags: howto, X.
If you do this with all your bookmarks retrieving stuff is very easy.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Tzenh]

I would suggest adopting a consistent approach for creating folders for everything that allows you to search easily such as - client/model/ author name, subject/location, month, year. For example:
Janet Andrews Wedding September 2010 or Family Mexico holiday April 1999 or David Bailey wildlife article March 2007

Think about how you tend to recall what you want to find - do you think in time, or by subject, or can you always remember a name?

Hope this helps x

 

[ann]

joe,

thanks

 

[crimbfighter]

Diigo - Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Online Bookmarking and Annotation, Personal Learning Network.


Regards,

Joe

This is great! Thanks for the link. I especially like how they have an Android app. This would make it really easy to note something in the field for later follow-up.

I think that for text based info it is worth considering sorting out the best and printing them off or at least copying the data to a word file. That at least keeps the info safe should the site shift to a very different webaddress or be taken down.

This is something I should start doing, copy and pasting, that is. Would definitely help to preserve the info off websites that die or change over time.

Thanks everyone for the replies. Some good ideas.