The Importance of Organization

I am not a stock photographer, as should be pretty obvious from this blog. Still, as a native Durhamite and a photographer, I have made a conscious effort to record some of the history and ambiance of the city I’ve called home all my life. Sometimes, I get inquiries about Durham photos to be used for various publications like materials for the Durham Convention  and Vistors Bureau. Recently, I was contacted by a fairly large magazine looking for some stock images of Durham. In a situation like this, you have to respond quickly and positively–if you don’t, they will move on to someone else and you will miss your opportunity. Magazine folks work on tight deadlines and you greatly increase your chances of success if you make things easier for them.

Problem is, I don’t have my many, scattered images of Durham archived in any sort of meaningful way. I don’t have them tagged in the metadata, I don’t have them in one central place, I don’t have a “stock photo depository” of images that might sell. I should do and have all of these things. I ended up finding the images I needed, but it took me about ten times the amount of time it should have taken if I’d been more organized and prepared.

Speaking about preparation, another thing to keep in mind if you are taking/collecting photographs of something that you hope to have published one day, is that you should make sure to have several different angles and photo orientations (vertical and horizontal). Because I am not normally out shooting specifically for editorial publication, I have vastly more horizontally oriented photos of Durham than I do vertical, but magazine covers are vertical, so unless an editor can crop one of my photos to a vertical, I don’t have any hope of making any covers. You want things to be as accessible, convenient, and easy as possible for potential photo editors that might be looking at your work.

Of course, if you’re just taking the photographs for yourself and for posterity, then don’t worry about it. That has been my approach to this point, but as a result of this contact–especially if I don’t get anything published–I will definitely be keeping all of these things in mind while I’m out photographing locally.

And if you’re wondering what all of these random photos are about, they’re all old photos I came across while digging through my archived photos, a happy consequence of being somewhat disorganized. I should add that I actually DO have systems of organization in place, and I will repeat that I DID find the images I was looking for–it’s just that my systems of organization aren’t optimal in this situation, where I was looking for a common thread across many years of photographs.