essential skills: digital photography in available light
Digital asset management
It does not seem so long ago that I was shuffl ing 35mm Kodachrome trannies around on a
light box to edit and create narrative sequences. This was followed by the laborious process of
labelling the trannie mounts with useful information of miniscule proportions, having inferior quality
duplicates made and then creating fi le sheets to catalog and archive the work before it was lost
to the undocumented subconscious of my brain. After sending the work via courier to the picture
editor of a magazine, the inevitable long wait, the ‘can you send us a copy we seem to have mislaid
the fi rst set’, followed by the publication of the work, the trannies invariably came back damaged
(hence the dupes) and it didn’t matter how carefully you cross referenced your cataloging system
you could never seem to lay your hands on a much needed trannie to complete an alternative edit
or grouping to maximize the potential of your visual assets.It has been a long time coming - but we now, fi nally, and after much gnashing of teeth, have an
effective (and superior) digital equivalent to this analog asset management process. Many early
adopters to digital capture (before Adobe camera RAW and Bridge became part of the collective
bundle of joy) have understandably acquired some unusual (perhaps unique) workfl ow processes.
The tools needed to complete the task logically, economically and effi ciently were not part of
Photoshop. Now we are able to adopt a digital asset management system into our daily workfl ow
so that the cataloging task does not get bigger than Ben Hur.Warning > The danger of NOT integrating a systematic workfl ow is that hard drive space
will quickly become eroded under the shear weight of digital data. You will, at short notice,
backup your images to drives or discs (in a desperate attempt to free up hard drive space so
that your computer does not grind to a halt). This will, in turn, prevent your computer’s search
engines, your Adobe software and your short-term memory from fi nding these fi les. Your fi les
may be labelled with memorable names such as _B240100.ORF contained in folders with
equally memorable names such as 116_Olympus. Your photographs will become lost in a
sea of meaningless data.