Lea Never worked on a project quite that big, but here is something I have found helpful at times.
Instead of wanting to create a "memento of their childhood", I would suggest you focus the project into sections of highlights of their childhood. Maybe you want to break it down to holidays, special toys, big vacations or trips, moments with mom and dad, laughter, ect How ever you decide to focus the project is fine, but have a focus. Otherwise you get lost in good images. Lots of images can be technically great, but do they really mean something and say something? Breaking it down to sections keeps it manageable for me and the thought of 70,000 images would overwhelm most of us. Finding 50 (or how ever many you decide) special birthday photos in that bunch is far more manageable with the search features of lightroom.
One other caution. Some time ago on ovation they had a story about a man doing a study of the steel mills at Pittsburgh. Did some stunning work back when the mills were going all out. Yet the volume was so high that the body of work was simply too large for a gallery display. Sad so many were never seen, and because the work was so large that publication was even difficult, an argument could be made the time was wasted. The project got out of hand and the creator lost focus. As a result so much effort was spent on something no one ever got to see.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: overwhelmed by a project
From: Lea Murphy <lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, February 15, 2012 9:33 am
To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students
<photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
I'm curious how others may have handled a similar situation as I'm feeling totally overwhelmed with a project and am having a heck of a time figuring out how to get it under control and manageable.
I've created an enormous body of work photographing my niece Rachel, her younger brother Joshua and their baby sister, Edyn. Enormous to me is 70K+ images of just these three.
These images are in a Lightroom catalog, key worded by name.
My goal is to go through them, select the best of the best and print them in black and white on my Epson 3800.
Eventually these images will end up with the children as a memento of their childhood.
My dilemma is that I am totally overwhelmed with how to tackle this.
I nose around in the images, pull out a good one, work it to the printable stage then run a print, catalog it and move on; it all feels very random with no real structure to the process.
Has anyone else tackled such a project going backwards over time while still continuing to add work to the project on an at-least weekly basis?
If so, how did you manage it?
I sit down to my computer with an hour or two to spare for working on it and find I can't settle in and accomplish anything because I don't see a clear path through the project.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
I'm open to all.
Lea
your kids . my camera . we'll click
www.leamurphy.com
