Photo Fear
Aug. 24th, 2010 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amanda_loddenWhile staring at a vast expanse of photos, waiting to be sorted and cropped (and some that already are cropped), I realized why I'm procrastinating over them:
I don't know what to do with them.
See, in my world, photos are meant to be viewed. If they aren't viewed by anyone, then what's the point of keeping them?
For the photos that have meaning to me, it's been easy. I have a directory, and when I'm done cropping the photo, I put them in the directory.
For photos that have little or no meaning to me, or that are meant to be shared, or that are part of the "dump all of the family lineage junk from Holly's side of the family onto Amanda" conspiracy (as the only child of an only child of an only surviving child, I inherited stacks and stack of albums full of people I don't recognize), I'm at a loss. They belong in the cloud somewhere so that other people who might be interested can someday find them, but all of the cloud services require payment (not for things that are meaningless to me, sorry) or limit the number of folders/photos that can go in them. I stopped using that system when I realized that I was juggling 4 Flickr logins, trying to remember what's in each of them.
The obvious alternative is to host my own photo software, and I've done that before with reasonable success. The problem is that in a recent server upgrade, the new version of the photo software won't read the config files from the old version of the photo software. I have all the photos (including the ones we were hosting for a friend, of her son, which really need to go up somewhere), but I fear going through the effort of sifting each and every one of them back into their proper place only to have the next upgrade wipe out all of the info again.
I'm almost thinking of putting a ridiculous amount of work into a new website, hosted on our servers, with no flashy bits whatsoever, that group like photos together-- for example, all the photos of my great-grandfather on a single page (or series of pages), with links to pages for his parents, wife, and children, and notes about things I remember about him (not much; he died when I was 2 1/2)... a "memory page" as it were. But the sheer volume of work for that is daunting, and I keep thinking that there must be a better way-- readable, backup-able, search-engine friendly, easily moved to another server without worrying about software compatibility (so, basic HTML/CSS only), and with an eye toward more text than the average photo caption allows.
All suggestions welcome. Suggestions that involve a minimum of work on my part are even more welcome.
I don't know what to do with them.
See, in my world, photos are meant to be viewed. If they aren't viewed by anyone, then what's the point of keeping them?
For the photos that have meaning to me, it's been easy. I have a directory, and when I'm done cropping the photo, I put them in the directory.
For photos that have little or no meaning to me, or that are meant to be shared, or that are part of the "dump all of the family lineage junk from Holly's side of the family onto Amanda" conspiracy (as the only child of an only child of an only surviving child, I inherited stacks and stack of albums full of people I don't recognize), I'm at a loss. They belong in the cloud somewhere so that other people who might be interested can someday find them, but all of the cloud services require payment (not for things that are meaningless to me, sorry) or limit the number of folders/photos that can go in them. I stopped using that system when I realized that I was juggling 4 Flickr logins, trying to remember what's in each of them.
The obvious alternative is to host my own photo software, and I've done that before with reasonable success. The problem is that in a recent server upgrade, the new version of the photo software won't read the config files from the old version of the photo software. I have all the photos (including the ones we were hosting for a friend, of her son, which really need to go up somewhere), but I fear going through the effort of sifting each and every one of them back into their proper place only to have the next upgrade wipe out all of the info again.
I'm almost thinking of putting a ridiculous amount of work into a new website, hosted on our servers, with no flashy bits whatsoever, that group like photos together-- for example, all the photos of my great-grandfather on a single page (or series of pages), with links to pages for his parents, wife, and children, and notes about things I remember about him (not much; he died when I was 2 1/2)... a "memory page" as it were. But the sheer volume of work for that is daunting, and I keep thinking that there must be a better way-- readable, backup-able, search-engine friendly, easily moved to another server without worrying about software compatibility (so, basic HTML/CSS only), and with an eye toward more text than the average photo caption allows.
All suggestions welcome. Suggestions that involve a minimum of work on my part are even more welcome.
