Thanks, I feel a bit better now. But I do also sympathize with movie stunt men -- they take a beating sometimes. I bet this one still hurt quite a bit… unless the whole thing is faked.

There are plenty of short videos that show "funny" situations or happenings (fails) that probably had a very bad outcome. Seeing how that car rocked makes me wonder if the guy even survived that kick. To say "he got what he deserved" may be a bit premature or short-sighted.

So yes, we do laugh at them, but maybe we should be shown what follows so that we can sympathize a bit more.

I love the analogy to music; and you can take that even a step further. Synthesizers now create sounds that no natural physical phenomenon can ever produce. Some are pleasing to the ear while others simply grate on the senses. I often look at TV commercials (and, of course, movies) today and wonder how they would have achieved that visual effect back in the '50s.

Hey Bob, be honest now… are you sure the second image was not SOOC and the first one you presented had the PP???

I am kidding, of course, but could you explain how you knew to take that particular exposure for the final effect? On my monitor the colors look really off in the original.

Sorry Ron, but I have to disagree with you on this one. The topic is "getting it right in the camera" with the intent of conveying to others the image the photographer imagined in his mind's eye. PP is a means of modifying what came out of the camera, but in the end it is all about COMMUNICATING a visual concept or idea.

The same principle applies to written communication. The first keystrokes on the computer are like SOOC. Some folks get it right the first time, but most writing can use proofing and editing.

Think of the message as an image. Proper spelling is akin to noise reduction; punctuation and paragraphing are like composition and cropping; the word choices themselves are like white balance; and shouting -- or SHOUTING/SHOUTING -- is like saturation/contrast adjustment. The final written message conveys an overall tone and says a lot about the creator of the text/image. The Preview button is your chance as the author of the message to see if what you have typed really conveys what you intended to say. If the message is not clear or not expressing your intent you have a chance to adjust it before presenting your work, and yourself, to the world.

I can make allowance for the odd spelling, punctuation and grammar errors; they do occasionally slip past even the best of text editors. And while folks for whom English is not their first language have more of a challenge, I read/interpret their material as having a slight accent (and it's often kind of cute!!).

But there are people on here who are REALLY bad at this. Their messages are full of splling mesteaks they don't know how to use pinktuashun or caps they create runnnnnon seeentneces etc etc etc.

Don't chastise those who point out spelling and grammar errors; they are in a manner of speaking critiquing a photo. We are here to share ideas and learn, and while there is much more latitude in what makes a photo great there is far less latitude for spelling and grammar. Our education system is at fault for no longer teaching/emphasizing these essentials, but the modern era of computers has provided us with great tools to PP our written messages. To not know they exist is ignorance; to not use them is laziness; to refuse to use them is stupidity; but to disrespect those who offer suggestions for improving one's work when the errors are truly black and white is… well… I'll just leave it at that. I got your message.

:thumbup: :thumbup: to that. And don't forget Preview before Send.

If you like the ritual and feel it enhances the experience then go for it. But it's instant for me, and drip when we have guests. The last time we had our coffee connoisseurs/grinders over they remarked on how good our coffee tasted. They were surprised it was just filter/drip coffee.

Somewhat similarly, I did a blind side-by-side taste test of scotch with friends who claimed they can tell a good one from a bad one (for me, "good" and "scotch" should never be in the same sentence!!!). Both the husband and wife chose the cheap scotch, even explaining all the attributes of it over the other. Hah!!!

Hey Marco, regarding your last statement, I don't have any bone to pick with you. In fact I see us as being in violent agreement.

One of the programs you refer to is ACDsee. I used it with my Pentax back in the mid 2000's on my PC because it came with the camera. It had some good editing features as well as organizing, sort of like an early LR. I believe it is still rated quite highly. Unfortunately I don't think what I had back then will run on my current Mac. If I can find the install disc I may give it a try, but it is about 12 years old and it may not have had a Mac version on there.

Cheers, my friend.
JF

If I were doing photography as a business the way you are I would probably use a system similar to yours because it is logical. But I may do that in a searchable database that can be viewed in any manner desired.

To relate a "file organizing" example from my past, in research we often requested reprints of research articles from other scientists to be used as reference material. This was well before desktop computers and internet. I tended to file my reprints in folders by topic. A colleague filed all his by author. A professor I worked with simply numbered each reprint as he received it and filed it in the cabinet by number. However, using carbon paper he made multiple copies of the title/author/keywords, etc on separate cards and filed them in appropriate file boxes. He would use whatever file box was appropriate for his search, and then he would simply locate the reprint via its serial number as listed on the card. Sounds like the old library catalogue system, doesn't it. In some ways I am emulating that system today and simply using the OS search capability to locate a photo by a keyword in the file name.

In the end, one has to be able to locate the particle image of interest, and I think you present a very viable organizational structure.

Another point from my original post that may have eluded some folks addresses the ease with which one can add useful information to mark/identify a photo. Programs like LR and other EXIF processors use keywords, but as I understand it some of those "indexing" approaches are particular to the program. I have chosen to add the useful information to the filename itself so that I am independent of the programs (assuming OSs will always be able to read a file name).

I don't know how familiar people on Macs are with Automator (and there may be a PC equivalent), but I find it VERY powerful for dealing with files and folders. I have been using computers for decades now, including programming right from machine code up to high level languages. There was never a question in my mind that with enough effort I could write my own code/scripts to manipulate file and folder names. But when I stumbled on Automator I was elated. Someone at Apple has put a user-friendly front end on scripting that makes it sooooo easy to use. Just as we don't have to tell the computer/printer where to put a dot to form a character, which is part of a word, which fits into a formatted paragraph in a text document, here is a way that the average person can use OS scripting to do very useful tasks.

Your last statement, of course, sums it all up. I think we are all providing helpful advice to folks who want suggestions on how to organize their photo files, and it is up to them to choose their favorite approach.

Does that mean you are an ASS (Alcohol Stabilized Senior)? :lol:

Image stabilization in modern cameras is already tuned to the lens focal length. Perhaps we need a "# cups coffee / time since last cup" manual setting that gets incorporated into the algorithm. Of course, getting the software properly tuned requires experimental data, and I think one of the Hogs has already shown us he would be at the high end of consumption. Sign him up!!!

It sounds like you don't buy extended warrantees on some things, but you advise it for the coffee maker because of the pump. I have a lot of faith in electronics, a bit less in high precision mechanicals like hard drives, but far less in cheap mechanics like pumps in coffee makers. Nevertheless, I don't buy extended warrantees on anything and in the long run I believe I am ahead. As I said in another thread, an extended warrantee plan has to come out in favor of the company from a business perspective. They play the odds with consumers and always win.

Thanks, Sue, glad you liked them. I thought she added to the beauty and tranquility of the setting. (And if you look at the original post, even my avatar seems to have taken notice of something eye-catching on that cliff :shock: .)

Yes, I use TimeMachine to automatically back things up. I also have photos on CDs and on yet another external hard drive that is usually disconnected from my system (manual backup of selected material).


Having read about LR (I don't have it) and having used a few other photo organizing applications (iPhoto; ACDsee) I would suggest that your higher level organizational structure is what "albums" would be for. When you create albums you don't actually move the photo, but rather create a directory of sorts that contains the pointers to the actual photo. That allows the same photo to be used in several collections, thereby avoiding making duplicates of the photos when, as someone in this thread alluded to, you have your uncle Fred (family) riding an elephant (animals) while on safari (vacations). And yes, I know that keywords are also useful for this purpose.

Perhaps I wasn't specific enough in my original post as to what I am doing and why. My filing approach is based on the principle of filing my photos as my "negatives" -- and ALL of them without deletion -- in numerical sequence based on the file number from the camera (thus, also in chronological order). Since I am not presently using LR or other such organizational software I don't have "albums". However, I do have subfolders of my "negatives" under MyPictures that are named with some high level descriptive title and the month/year of the photos. And since those high level folder names begin with the first and last photo number in the subfolder they are displayed in alphabetic/photo-number/chronological order.

Within those folders I may have more subfolders with similar naming schemes, as in my month-long trip to China where I created subfolders for each day of shooting labelled with the name of the city or activity of that day, but eventually I get down to an actual photo file that is named with the camera-assigned number and then my text descriptions. So if I want to find my photos of the terra-cotta warriors I know to look in the main folder China, then the subfolder with Xian in the name, and then I will find my 150 photos of that subject. And yes, I could simply use the OS capability and search for "terra-cotta" and it would find all of those photos, and maybe even the next higher parent folder if it contained that word in the folder name, and maybe all my emails that contained that word, and… and then I would start filtering the results by restricting the search to MyPictures. Lots of choices to easily locating a specific photo.

Since hard drive space is relatively inexpensive these days, I do sometimes create my own albums/collections based on some topic, but when I do that I actually make another copy of the photo and put it in there. These collections might be anywhere on my hard drive based on the intent. If I am sending/emailing someone smaller files of my China trip I would put this collection under the main folder China; if I am selecting photos for a travel article I may put that collection under publishing/travel_articles/NatGeo [I wish!!] alongside the manuscript. But I always retain the camera-assigned number so that I can always go back to my negative.

Bottom line and the main point of my original post is that I file ALL of my photos as if they were negatives in numerical sequence, and I retain that photo number no matter where I may have other copies of that particular photo. And any manipulation of the photo is done on a copy of that photo so that I can always get back to the original, much as PP does not change the original RAW file itself. Someday I will make the move to LR or similar but for now I do some of that bookkeeping manually.

But I have ALL of my negatives, duds included, so that I don't fret over having misplaced/misnamed/lost a photo. OCD perhaps, but it is simple, logical, it works for me, and I thought it might provide some ideas for folks who were asking questions about organizing their photos.

JF

Not on an iMac. It is just a plain slot that you push the CD into. And I have no idea how to force a stuck CD out if the computer does not eject it on command.

Anyone know how to do that?