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By Root 4099 0

the in-office, back-at-the-office, and in-studio scenarios. One of the challenges is adapting those processes to work in the field. Often, the client is on hand, looking over your shoulder and demanding that you deliver finished files—or at least midpoint images—on the spot. Further, although most clients will be comfortable with whatever file-naming convention you've chosen, there have been times when clients have insisted that we use their file-naming conventions, which are significantly different than what we were using.

I have found myself in more than one instance in which a CEO has wanted to see the images on our onsite digital workstation 10 seconds after having his photo taken. One solution would have been to use our wireless transmitter to deliver the JPEGs to the workstation as I was shooting, but that wasn't set up beforehand. Instead, we mounted the card and, without proper ingestion, dragged the entire image folder onto Photo Mechanic and let the subject see the take. The CEO wouldn't wait around for even five or six minutes for ingestion.

If we get some push back on whether the CEO likes the images, we find that it's often because of wrinkles, bags, or blemishes. We then, from the card, open the image in Photoshop and demonstrate some very rough retouching. This holds great appeal to the CEO, and on more than one occasion it has resulted in return engagements for other company executives. Is there a risk in browsing images on the card? You bet. Is there a risk in opening images from the card without ingestion? Ditto. But, many circumstances have you working on the fly, and the ability to improvise and give the clients what they want when they want it and to minimize the risk means a happy client.

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NOTE

A word about our digital workstation. Although we could turn up with a G5 and a 30" monitor, in the end it's our laptop, but one that is set up to get online, process images, and such. We diminish the value of having such a powerful machine onsite when we refer to it as just a laptop. So, by referring to it as a digital workstation, it is given its proper due, and it is then accepted as a line item charge ("Digital Workstation - $xxx") on the invoice.

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As mentioned before, in some instances clients have their own naming system. Mine for, say, an IBM CEO portrait would be:

YYYYMMDD_IBM_CEO_001.JPG

However, the client's might be a unique internal job number, followed by his employee number and then a sequence number. How do you integrate that? For me, onsite, I make note of their system and apply it if I have to deliver more than one or two images. Back in the office, I use my own system but utilize the metadata to store the client's filename so that when they call to locate the original image, to request retouching, or the like, instead of searching the filenames for that information, I search the metadata fields, and the image turns up. I'll do the work on the file, save it as a variation (Krogh refers to these variations as derivatives) using my file-naming structure, and then we deliver the images via FTP or on CD/DVD with the client's naming structure applied.

There are some limitations to file naming that you should be aware of as you alter the system to suit your own needs. From Controlled Vocabulary1, a system developed by David Riecks:

[T]he most important thing that a filename can do for your image collection is to provide a form of unique identification (or UID) for each digital "asset." However, if you wish to be able to exchange your image files with clients or colleagues (often using different computer operating systems), then you need to observe some standards for cross-platform compatibility to ensure maximum portability. Here are some recommendations to avoid potential problems.

Files should only contain numerals, letters, underscores, hyphens (in some cases), and one dot (more commonly known as a period). Some file-naming systems are cAsE sEnSiTiVe, so be sure to be consistent. In addition, there are limits to the length of file names, directory/path lengths, and