Francisco has highlighted just one more reason why the cloud is not a very good option in DAM right now.
Hopefully in the future that will change.
Francisco is correct in stating that there are standards for image metadata encapsulated by the IPTC.
However, especially for the individual photographer, they are difficult and time consuming to implement.
In addition, to use agencies as an example: if the standards were absolute then surely a standard keyword list would suffice for all.
In fact this does not happen and each agency has its own keyword list and standard for keywording.
When the concept of metadata and keywording is applied to the individual photographer the problem just magnifies.
Individuals tend to keyword at a level of detail that suits them.
Some will keyword an image as 'family' with no more detail while others will also list the individuals present and perhaps the occasion as well.
There is no absolute standard that says that one approach is correct while the other is incorrect.
The same applies to the detail entered into the various IPTC fields.
In general what one shoots plays a large part in determining how those images will be documented not to mention the intended audience of those images. A photographic editor in a large press organisation will 'see' your image in a completely different way to yourself and will classify it very differently.
Perhaps an even bigger issue than the survival and accessibility of the images themselves is the survival of useful metadata associated with those images. Using Lightroom as an example it is a fact that many individuals never write the metadata to file so all that carefully accumulated metadata only exists in the catalog. In the future it is not inconceivable that the version of Lightroom in which those images reside is no longer supported by Adobe and will not run on current hardware. An even worse, but also conceivable, scenario is that Adobe itself is long dead and buried. However, if all the image metadata is written to file then the original software used to do the work becomes much less important.
As long as information is written into the correct fields it will be easily accessible in the future.
Although IPTC standards may change over time every iteration is well documented and in any case most changes are additions to the standard rather than fiddling with existing fields.
Finally, electronic data is proving itself to be very volatile.
A lot of thought and effort needs to go into ensuring that one's images (and metadata) survive long enough for anyone else to actually access.
Furthermore changes in technology make the whole field of electronic back up and archiving a very fluid environment.
Excellent strategies from just a few years back become redundant (CD-ROM) while other opportunities arise.
Budget is also a consideration.
The Library of Congress has massive resources to ensure that its electronic data survive.
Even individual professional photographers do not have access to that sort of resource.
Nonetheless with some thought and planning current advances in technology make back ups and archiving progressively more easy, accessible, and affordable.
I use a combination of hard drives, internal and external, some onsite and some offsite, to back up and archive my images.
Metadata is written back to file (XMP in the case of RAW images).
As it turns out I also back up the Lightroom catalog and previews as well to every hard drive as well.
The software I use is simple free utility that does bit-for-bit backups.
I confess that I do not have specific instructions in my will dealing with my image collection - something to remedy here, I think.
Hopefully, in the future, the tools and technology available for making robust backup and archives for our images will continue to improve and become cheaper.
Nonetheless adequate technology is present now to do the job but the majority of photographers, professional or otherwise, are not taking advantage of these tools and so they are barely able to recover from a single hard drive failure today never mind have their images available for posterity twenty years after their death.
So, Paul, I commend you for confronting an issue which is always somewhat uncomfortable to think about but it is certainly possible to have our image collection outlive us and be readily accessible to future generations be they just our families or a much wider audience.
For reference Peter Krogh has written an excellent book dealing with Digital Asset Management that, admittedly, is showing its age a bit in the details because technology has moved on. He has also recently released a video tutorial series using Lightroom for Digital Asset Management. The technology utilised in that video is relevant currently. In any case both book and tutorial expand on concepts that have proven to be timeless.
Tony Jay
