Like a great number of people today I have literally a thousand or more pictures. Digital images stored on discs, drives, and in the cloud. It may even be more than one cloud, I'm not really certain. But I take these photos and am sure to save them. The difficulty comes in when I wish to retrieve them. I mean, when I want to retrieve particular ones. I remember these pictures, I know they are there somewhere, but locating the file is the challenge. I have had several photo programs over the years, different file systems and all that. I even bought that " photo stick " I'm sure you have seen advertised. Just put it into an available USB port and it will search your computer and find every picture. Yes, it did that but was quickly out of space. But, I've saved those pictures.
As I said the file system is what frustrates me. To identify each photo in a fashion I can remember is the challenge. I haven't labeled each photo or file in any meaningful way. What seemed like a good idea at the moment turned out to be not so good. I find myself just staring! It's that same feeling of knowing you have something but not remembering exactly where it is. Is it in the junk drawer, the closet or the attic? I wonder where to even begin looking. And that, that is a frustration. All this technology and the same old problems. I do have a great number that I printed. I have a few photo books that were created automatically from my Facebook timeline, I find those interesting. But the problem remains.
The bigger problem I have is maintaining the interest. That is to say to not just throw my hands up in the air and say forget it! I go looking because I have some great idea in mind. This or that would make a great gift if I included that picture. The frustration is in finding " that " picture. I know exactly what I want but where is it? Well never mind. It happens when I writing these blogs sometimes. I want to include a certain photograph but can't find it. I took to saving certain photographs to the desktop. I can always find the desktop. Then I'm told to not keep too many icons on the desktop you're messing up the computer. So I allow them to go into the file. Yes you can view those pictures in " icon " view but then without a magnifying glass I can't see what they are! Then I have to click on each one and that takes time. My patience runs thin and I quit!
Well the whole problem is my fault, I know that. If I had devised some system, some method to identify each picture I wouldn't have this problem. Instead I just tossed all these pictures in a pile. Yes many have a date stamp on them, Do you remember the date of your pictures? I struggle to remember the year, let alone a month or day. I guess I should have tagged each picture. I heard that the computer can search for pictures that way. I guess I should have thought about that twenty years ago. Well, I have those pictures somewhere. I don't have any floppy discs but I do have the ones that followed that. You know the ones in a hard plastic case and they hold four of five pictures. Then of course I have the CD's, lots of those, and now thumb drives and SD cards. Pictures everywhere.
I do have the technology to open and view all the different mediums. It would definitely take a very long time to consolidate them all to one format. I started a little while back to transfer Video tapes to video files and that is a slow process. I expect if I wanted to spend a great deal of money on equipment I could speed up the process. All this technology but it is still up to me to store it in some easily accessible fashion. You know the easiest thing would be to just print every picture I want saved. I say that because I'm quite certain these pictures will not get viewed in the future if they are not in that old fashioned format. We are still looking at pictures painted on the walls of caves, tried and true method. And the only tech you need to see them is your eyes! Is this progress? I'm not so certain. I just may go back to printing.
As I said the file system is what frustrates me. To identify each photo in a fashion I can remember is the challenge. I haven't labeled each photo or file in any meaningful way. What seemed like a good idea at the moment turned out to be not so good. I find myself just staring! It's that same feeling of knowing you have something but not remembering exactly where it is. Is it in the junk drawer, the closet or the attic? I wonder where to even begin looking. And that, that is a frustration. All this technology and the same old problems. I do have a great number that I printed. I have a few photo books that were created automatically from my Facebook timeline, I find those interesting. But the problem remains.
The bigger problem I have is maintaining the interest. That is to say to not just throw my hands up in the air and say forget it! I go looking because I have some great idea in mind. This or that would make a great gift if I included that picture. The frustration is in finding " that " picture. I know exactly what I want but where is it? Well never mind. It happens when I writing these blogs sometimes. I want to include a certain photograph but can't find it. I took to saving certain photographs to the desktop. I can always find the desktop. Then I'm told to not keep too many icons on the desktop you're messing up the computer. So I allow them to go into the file. Yes you can view those pictures in " icon " view but then without a magnifying glass I can't see what they are! Then I have to click on each one and that takes time. My patience runs thin and I quit!
Well the whole problem is my fault, I know that. If I had devised some system, some method to identify each picture I wouldn't have this problem. Instead I just tossed all these pictures in a pile. Yes many have a date stamp on them, Do you remember the date of your pictures? I struggle to remember the year, let alone a month or day. I guess I should have tagged each picture. I heard that the computer can search for pictures that way. I guess I should have thought about that twenty years ago. Well, I have those pictures somewhere. I don't have any floppy discs but I do have the ones that followed that. You know the ones in a hard plastic case and they hold four of five pictures. Then of course I have the CD's, lots of those, and now thumb drives and SD cards. Pictures everywhere.
I do have the technology to open and view all the different mediums. It would definitely take a very long time to consolidate them all to one format. I started a little while back to transfer Video tapes to video files and that is a slow process. I expect if I wanted to spend a great deal of money on equipment I could speed up the process. All this technology but it is still up to me to store it in some easily accessible fashion. You know the easiest thing would be to just print every picture I want saved. I say that because I'm quite certain these pictures will not get viewed in the future if they are not in that old fashioned format. We are still looking at pictures painted on the walls of caves, tried and true method. And the only tech you need to see them is your eyes! Is this progress? I'm not so certain. I just may go back to printing.
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