Filing…Photo Database

I spent some time over the weekend re-organising workspaces – filing paper files in a new small 2nd hand old grey filing cabinet I picked up on sale (along with a quite comfortable work chair which was also a bargain) – will get around to spray painting it purple in the future – to which my more conservative son replied “you’re not serious” – actually I am!

I take all my own source photos for my work but there is the question – how do I get this to work so they are quickly and easily accessible? My solution is to use photo boxes. I make cardboard dividers on which I put the botanical name, common name, distribution & flowering information plus anything else I think may be particularly relevant to that particular species. I have also generated a photo database using excel which I have a hard copy at hand with all the records of this information with cross references for botanical and common names so if I forget one I can still usually find it using the other! This all takes a fair bit of time like all filing but it makes life so much easier. I have the actual negatives filed in folders with names on each.

These days with digital photos they are all filed on the computer with back-up hard-drive and try and make cd/dvd backup disks as well. My fear is that with this digital phase we may actually end up losing many photos and not have all those wonderful ‘old’ historical photos I love looking at from years gone by.

I need to generate a new excel file with all of those digital photos yet but maybe on another wet weekend!