I cull my photos quite ruthlessly, but maintain backups of everything I eventually keep (large external HDs are pretty cheap these days). I also maintain a database with all the extra information that is needed for sites like iNaturalist - so I could recreate everything from scratch if necessary. My assumption is that any site I upload my records to is just a temporary holding area which could disappear at any time without notice. (Yes, I’m a born pessimist).
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Thanks for the suggestion. I am an artist and a sentimental/ visual keepsake fool! I take a ton of photos for creative purposes but since I started using iNat the hundred photos have turned into several hundred per week.
I’m not tech savvy and easily frustrated by feeling dense with the terminology and conceptual elements of everything. Especially, when so many things change so frequently.
I make hard copy photo books of especially important photos and make prints for my art biz. I need to clear up issues on my laptop to be able to have the speed to deal with the sheer amount of photo culling. I’m slowly chipping away at my accumulating technology issues. It’s hard when I prefer to be outside and procrastinating is easy with this stuff.
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How would you go about doing the database and what type of information would you add?
Also not a carved in stone solution, but it works for me.
I pick out the best photos from my hikes each month and make a blog post - gives me searchable, easy to find access. And I can link back to my iNat obs.
(Too much on my laptop - which needs sorting, and formal backing up)
https://eefalsebay.blogspot.com/2019/04/hiking-march-flowers-neighbourhood-farm.html
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/20996653
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/21026757
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I wrote my own program for organising all my photos/records. The database holds all the information about the date, location, taxon, sex, life-stage and so forth, plus other associated data (such as which site the record has been uploaded to). I find this much easier to manage than embedding it all in the image metadata, and with a large collection of photos it is also much, much faster when it comes to searching, updating, etc.
If you’re not a programmer, you could probably achieve something similar using a spreadsheet. Most upload sites have an export facility (the iNat one is here) that allows you to download all your records as a CSV file that can then be imported into a spreadsheet. That will give you a simple way to maintain a searchable off-line database of your records that can also act as a backup.
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Ok, ty for the information. I did see the download option for a CSV file but I didn’t know what program it was for (I obviously don’t use Excel or a database software all that often, lol).
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