[pure-silver] Re: Getting Organized

This has been a big problem for me too. HEre is how I am solving it now:
1. I went to a Keith Carter workshop and he explained his organizational system. When he starts a new project, he names it, and gets a box for those prints. I've started doing this. Then, if it's roll film, I get a negative file and label it with the name of that project. (I get the smaller ones that are good for one project.) Then, I make the contact sheets for that project and put them in a binder with the name of the project on the spine. Ok. Now I have the film filed, the contact sheets filed, and the box. Nothing to do but start printing!
1.a) sometimes I take some negatives from another file and put them in a current project file if I think they go with that project. For example, one of my current projects is called "The Call of the Tame." It's about domestic animals and the landscape. I am shooting it with a holga. But I found some older negatives, some shot with the holga and some not, that I pulled out of older files and stuck in The Call of the Tame negative file, to reprint later (maybe).
1.b) Once the box has a lot of prints in it, I start scanning them, and then I put them on my Flickr site. Then I start looking for some place to show them. I put the full boxes on a shelf in the living room. They are stacked so that you can see the name of the projects on the side of the box and pull them out quickly.
1. c) I keep 4x5 negatives in little paper sleeves in a box that you can get from Light Impressions. I like this system better for 4x5 negatives than the clear files that hold 4 negatives, because you can write on the paper sleeves and make notes about date, printing, etc. Also I re-sort them a lot by topic and this is easier to do when they are filed individually rather than in groups of four.
1.d) My 8x10 negatives are stored in 8 1/2 x11 sheet protectors in a regular negative file box, by project.
2. About planning projects: I use the GTD system, short for Getting Things Done by David Allen. There are lots of websites about this. The book by the same name is very good. In GTD, you have a list of your current projects, a list of projects you might do someday/maybe, and a list of "next actions." Each project has one "next action."
Right now my current photographic projects are "The Call of the Tame," "Every Fence Post on Brangus Lane," and "Flora Obscura." I have a lot more projects that are someday/maybe projects. The "next action" for The Call of the Tame is to unload the holga, label and date that roll, and put another roll in. The next action on "every fencepost" is to wait for the film that I ordered for it. Same with Flora Obscura. So now I don't have a whole lot to do.
Oh, except that some of my projects are applying to various shows, etc. One project is "Art League Proposal Deadline," and another is "Slow Exposure Show."
The GTD system really helped me stop shooting randomly and start focusing on individual projects. But I shot randomly for a long time. I think you have to do that for a while to sort of learn. Then I figured out that it's impossible to photograph the whole world, much as one would like to. And I started making up projects.
I find that one project leads to another. For example, people started creeping into my pictures of domestic animals. So now I have another project planned about people in the landscape. 

And the fence posts just never end...

--shannon

On May 25, 2009, at 7:39 PM, Elias Roustom wrote:
At the risk of revealing too much about my worst habit, the lack of habits, I'm going to ask if anyone else has the same problem I'm having. Two years into photography, I now have sheets and sheets of negatives, prints experimenting with every sort of technique or paper or developer, and no order to any of it. I'm at a point now where it's getting hard to move forward with any photographic project without looking for something under something else... I'm going to assume I'm not the only one who has an obsession with this craft and is also very busy (with paying work). I've got some ideas of how to dig out, straighten up and fly right, but I'm curious how some of you have dealt with putting your house in order? Not only about storage and retrieval, or record keeping, but about anything pertaining to managing current projects and planning future projects. I could use some inspiration, and some good ideas. 

Elias
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http://shannonstoney-twors.blogspot.com/
http://branguslane.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannonstoney/

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