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Cataloguing Photos

With a bunch more photos in hand, and hundreds still stuck on my laptop that all need to be sorted, it was time to do something about it. I currently have thousands of photos sorted into folders according to the time and place they were taken. This works pretty good too, but when somebody comes and asks me to see all the photos of “so and so” it becomes an endless work of digging through every folder in search of any photos which may contain “so and so”. This is the same problem that I have when people want photos for “such and such” too.

Now I have been aware of this problem for a while, and have been trialing a number of different software types in search of the perfect solution. Of course there is no such thing as the perfect solution, but it is nice to come close at least. Finally, I suspect that I have found what I need.

IMatch image management program

IMatch 3 is a photo cataloguing program that, although a little technical to start with, provides all the functionality I need at a price that is affordable. I had previously looked at using the iView program (now part of the Phase One software group) which is very good too, but it had a much higher investment cost that I could not justify. Impulse Adventure provided a great comparison page between all of the different programs that could do this sort of job for me, and through this and other reviews that I read, it was obvious that IMatch was a great program.

So now I am busy in all of my spare time starting to sort out each and every single photo that I have. At last check there were something like 21,000 photos that I need to catalogue, but this keeps growing every time I take more shots. Some of these photos are currently on the web, but it has been a while since I added more there because of the state of disrepair my photos had fallen into.

Now I have new hope that one day they will all be sorted, and if I should ever want to find all of my photos that contain “closeups of Henry and Julie together in Argentina during 2004” then it is a simple click of a button to find them. There is a lot of work to get there, but it is highly feasible. After all, this is a small image collection compared to many photographers out there.

So if you are wondering what I may be doing couped up indoors for days on end, you can be sure that I will be sorting photos. Sorting, sorting, sorting, sorting, sorting…

…til it is done.

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Brothers Three

Sometime in 2001, while living in New Zealand, I headed with my elder brother over to Japan where our youngest brother was living for a while. The idea was to catch up with him and check out where he was living as well as get to see some of this fascinating land called Japan.

It was a fantastic time, just us three guys, as we travelled from city to city, and temple to temple. Bush walks with bell-toting-bear-scaring hikers all around us, thousands of steps leading up to temples on mountain tops, and views over nearby highly populated areas. Train travel on super-fast and high-luxury trains from Tokyo to many other cities in the south. Temples and museums and temples and old towns, and temples and parks, and temples and foods. A highly amazing journey through belief systems, cultural diversity, technological marvels, and even the “nostril of Budda” (which was really only a hole in a temple support pole).

During this journey of “The Brothers Three” we stopped in at some of the amazing “fun” centres – a building filled with video games, activities, and photographic booths. Wanting to “capture the moment” of our time here, we all stepped into one of the photo booths. It seemed important to capture some of the fun and amazement we were experiencing in our travels, and with some creative facial expressions we came up with this. The Brothers Three. Amazement. Incredulity. Lost for words.

The Brothers Three
Brodie (youngest), John (oldest), Me

And so we were as we travelled around this amazing country. Faces of wonder, taking in all of the new sights and exploring so many differences. A fun photo. A fun time. The only time we have ever travelled together.

The Brothers Three.

Many thanks to my good friend Jorge who recently found this photo burried in some books I gave him ages ago and went to the effort of scanning and sending me a copy of it.