Impediments to Photography

[tigertoy]

I wrote a comment in pleonastic's LJ that I should actually make as an entry in my own blog.  I'd like to be able to actually capture all the trains of thought that this has set off in my mind, but to begin with I'll just repeat what I said in that comment.  Hopefully soonish I can expand on some of this.

Upthread from this comment I'd mentioned that there were some things holding me back as an on-line photographer.  I then expanded on that to say:

What's keeping me from posting pictures on a reasonable regular schedule is that it takes me so much time sitting in front of the computer before I can actually post something, and secondarily that it's such a chore.

I need:
(1) a reliable broadband Internet connection;
(2) a software solution to organizing pictures so that I can pull the memory cards from the cameras I used that day, stuff them in the card reader, and not have to use my brain at all to get the files copied
into the file structure *I* want them in;
(3) a software solution to organizing, uploading, and presenting as a web page the edited pictures I want from that day.

(2) and (3) are things I ought to be able to do for myself, but I'm so damn burned out on software and computers that I've made zero progress towards those goals in the more than 3 years I've known I need them.  I have a tremendous aversion to paying commercial software prices, but if there were a package that would just do what I wanted, I'd be willing to pay for it. What I'm not willing to do is to pay huge wads of money for something that I then have to deal with learning to use, hoping that I can actually get it to do what I really want.

Comments

[alymid.livejournal.com]

you might want to look at the menalto gallery software for the web side. Its very easy to use, and easily installed on many webhosts.

[alymid.livejournal.com]

oh - and free.

[born-to-me.livejournal.com]

Adobe's Photoshop Album Starter is free and *wonderful*. I use it to catalog all my photos and I'm incredibly pleased with it - pleased enough to possibly upgrade at some point, although I can't really tell that there's a downside to not upgrading.

It does it all for me, when I plug in my camera it starts and grabs and then deletes them off the camera. You can use it to scan and do other things as well. The picture fixing tools are nice as well.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Deleting off the camera is one thing I don't want it to do for me. I do not want the images off the memory card until they are on at least two hard drives, and even then only when I need to re-use the full memory card.

One of my requirements is that the image acquisition be aware of which images it's already seen when I feed it a memory card it's seen before (but which has new stuff on it).

[born-to-me.livejournal.com]

It gives you prompts for everything, it's very easy to set up.

I don't know about the latter requirement you have - I don't think it can do that, but I'm not sure. You'd have to check it out, I love it, but I'm sure it's not for everyone.

[sraun]

Do you know dd_b, or Ctein or Geof Stone (WANOLJ)?

I know dd_b & Geof have some degree of 'copy from memory card to hard drive' automation. It sounds like you're looking for some software that's part of the class of stuff I identify as "work-flow" from conversations I've listened in on over the last year or so. Let me know if you'd like a referral?

Re: Impediments to Photography

[(Anonymous)]

i asked this over there, but it makes more sense over here:

what's your operating system? and what's the file structure you would like the software to use?

Re: Impediments to Photography

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

WTF? it still _has_ me as logged in, but it posted this as anonymous. tnx, LJ. please to leave answer after an actually logged-in comment (which this one might also not be, who knows), so that i get the comment notification.

Re: Impediments to Photography

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing you'll see this (http://tigertoy.livejournal.com/275855.html) on your flist, but just in case, I'll reply here. I rambled at length about what I want in management software; hopefully you can at least follow my maunderings.