I have started culling 30-plus years of photos, trying to determine what's worth keeping, and how to make those photos presentable. So far the percentage is very low. That brings me to the question of what to do with the others which comprise the vast majority.

I'm not referring to the technical disasters I usually refer to as artistic effects but the 2 dozen frames I took as the train came through the scene I was photographing. One shot has everything in place, and focus, if I got lucky, and 23 frames of here-it-comes-aw-I-missed-it.

My question is; am I the only one? If not, what are y'all doing to make your photo libraries usable now and in the future when people who weren't around when the pics were taken have to decide how to interpret or edit (read discard) them?



Chattanooga's other (recently neglected)RR website
mail@steamvalley.com

what are y'all doing to make your photo
> libraries usable now and in the future when
> people who weren't around when the pics were
> taken have to decide how to interpret or
> edit (read discard) them?

Well, you can never have too many pictures ;-)

As someone who has been pouring through piles of vintage photos for the past few years, I'd have to say I wish my dad had created some kind of system for filing his photos. My father shot thousands of pictures from the mid-1940's, until shortly before he passed away in 1991 -mostly of trains.

If he liked an image he put it in an album, but wrote only a tiny description on the back of the print. I've held up many negative strips looking for a match to one of these "keeper" prints. No system there.

If he didn't like an image, he might keep it anyway, but either would draw a large X through the face of the print(!), or write NG on the back. In some cases I've "photoshopped" out these marks in order to save a somewhat unique image.

So I would say keep your negatives, file them alphabetically, keep prints of the frames you like, and start scanning. I'm scanning whenever time allows, as many prints and negatives as I can (at the highest possible resolution) and storing them on cd's.




SJHussar@aol.com

I realize that everyone has their own indexing system, and at the risk of starting a long thread, let me describe what I use for slides. I use the information (year, month, frame number)that Kodak puts on the slide mount. To this, I add a roll-of-the-month code and a quality code. For example, 197310A20-6 was taken in October 1973, was on the first roll taken that month (A), and is frame number 20 on that roll. It's pretty good (6).

I keep a looseleaf book containing a page for each roll. In the above case, 197310A20-0 would be on the 197310A page. The columns on that page are slide number, general class (people, trains, hiking, tec), location (Vermont, C&TS, etc), and a brief description. The pages are done in MS Word and can be searched. All of the pages representing the contents of one 1500-slide Logan file are in one computer file. I keep all my slides. I also put a brief piece of info on each slide, but not as much as is in the book.

I'm sure others have their own schemes, but what I like about this scheme is that Kodak does most of the work for me ;-)

-John

mcnamara@theworld.com

Not a bad idea. I haven't started cataloging anything yet. Might as well start.

Nice web site BTW..

> I have started culling 30-plus years of
> photos, trying to determine what's worth
> keeping, and how to make those photos
> presentable. So far the percentage is very
> low. That brings me to the question of what
> to do with the others which comprise the
> vast majority.

> I'm not referring to the technical disasters
> I usually refer to as artistic effects but
> the 2 dozen frames I took as the train came
> through the scene I was photographing. One
> shot has everything in place, and focus, if
> I got lucky, and 23 frames of
> here-it-comes-aw-I-missed-it.

> My question is; am I the only one? If not,
> what are y'all doing to make your photo
> libraries usable now and in the future when
> people who weren't around when the pics were
> taken have to decide how to interpret or
> edit (read discard) them?


Al's Rail Photos.
acp19809@yahoo.com

Thanks for the ideas guys. My problem is that I have sheets upon sheets of negatives, a few hundred transparencies and precious few prints. I'm just beginning to get these things organized by the year they were taken. In some cases a 3 to 5 year span is close as I can get. While a few "events" like N&W 611's first day back in steam and test run are mostly together and dates/locations can be retrieved or intuited, there are way too many images shot from the car window or in between other assignments or while waiting on the steamer-du-jour. Those images mostly have no documentation other than whats visible in the frame. And I don't know if (ex) L&N 246 is of historic interest out of context, or just another piece of celluliod for my heirs to toss when they clean out my basement.

The responses I've seen indicate that most of y'all are more organized than I, thank goodness.
I am trying to scan and caption some of the more interesting of the scenes.

that other (lately neglected) Chattanooga website
mail@steamvalley.com