The most precious asset to any business is its digital data.  In the world of business, which includes photography, that data is information about its customers, sales,revenue, and products.  In photography the products are the raw and edited digital images they create. 

Unfortunately, standard operating procedures in data management and data protection are not widely practice in photography.  Best case, this could result in time wasted searching for or categorizing images.  Worse case scenario, this  could be the loss of large portions of a portfolio, which would be a disaster to a photographer. 

Before becoming a sport photographer, I spent a career in information technology using, and selling, the best practices to manage and protect data.   Here are some of those best practices, customized to sports photography, to make best use of your time and avoid disaster.

Keep Two Copies of your Images

The basic tenant in data protection is to always maintain a backup copy of your data.  In photography, this begins with writing images from the camera to two memory cards as you are pressing the shutter release.   

Professional-grade cameras all have slots for two memory cards.  Most photographers configure their camera to have one card roll-over to the other once it is full.  A better approach is to have the camera save images to both cards simultaneously. This averts a problem if one card goes bad, is corrupted, or is accidentally erased.

Protect as you Go

Nearly every camera brand has a function to protect images while the card is in the camera.  Protecting an image prevents it from accidentally being erased from the card. The only way to remove a protected image is to re-format the card. 

Professional-grade cameras either have a button designated to protect images, or allows  another button to be re-programed to protecting images.  In Canon cameras the protect button has the icon of a key on it.  Protecting the image is as simple as pressing the protect button as you are reviewing the images.  You’ll only want to protect those images that that you intend to edit (i.e., those images that nicely capture the action and are of high technical quality).  The photographer should continually review the images as they are shooting and protect the images that are worth keeping. 

There is an added benefit of protecting images, which is discussed next. While not officially a data management best practice, it’s still a great technique. 

Only Import Protected Images

Sports photographer are driven by deadlines.  Teams and media outlets want edited images immediately after the game, often during the game, for use in social media posts and post-game articles.  The time lost to downloading images that they don't plan on editing will drive a deadline-driven photographers crazy. Thankfully, there is an answer to that. 

Most sports photographers use a software product called Photo Mechanic to import images.  (Note: Photo Mechanic uses the term ingest, instead of import).  At the Ingest dialogue box, Photo Mechanic has the option of downloading “locked”photos only.  The term locked means the image has been protected (think back to the Canon icon of the key).  Downloading only the locked, or protected, images saves a massive amount of time. 

For me, only 10% of the images I take are worthy of editing.  Ignoring the 90% of the images allows me to save time by downloading only the images I plan to edit.  (Note: Photo Mechanic is a little inconsistent in its use of the term “locked.” It also using the term “tagged,”meaning the same thing,  in the “contact sheet” view). 

During a game, I will import, edit, and publish the protected images.  After the game I’ll download the unprotected, or unlocked, images. Downloading all the images allows me to address special requests that may arise later (i.e., images of a particular moment or player) that you initially didn’t publish.

Pre-Populate Metadata

A professional sports photographer lives and dies by metadata.  The term meta data sounds intimidating, but simply put, metadata is information that describes and explains the image. 

Metadata provides you with a very powerful data management tool.  Using metadata allows you to quickly search on terms associated with the images. These searches can be done using photo editing applications like Lightroom or Capture One, or file management systems like Windows File Explorer of Mac Finder.   

For example, suppose a client requests an image of a particular player.  You simply type that player’s name into the search bar of the photo editor or file manager and all the images of that player pop-up.

The International Press Telecommunications Council (ITPC) has established a standardized template for metadata in photography, including fields such as image description, key words, event name and event location.  The ITPC template is use in nearly all photo editing products. 

Metadata must be entered for each image.  Thankfully, most of the metadata will not change from image to image and a global cut and paste can be done.  An even better way of approaching the metadata is to pre-populate the information into the template, and have the template applied to each image as it is being imported. 

The only information you must individually enter for each image is the caption field.  A more complete discussion of captioning is provided below.

Most all photo editors allow you to save the metadata so it can easily be used again. You can build metadata template libraries for various teams or venues. 

Rename Image Files During Import

One of the most convenient import automatons is the renaming of the image files.  Renaming the file eliminates confusion when you are working with images from multiple games. 

The default file naming convention combines a code for that camera body and the image sequence.  For example, a camera code of BM2K and an image sequence number of 1613 becomes a file name of BM2K1613.  Not very useful. 

I find it helpful to rename the file to describe the event being photographed.  Photo Mechanic lets you rename files using combinations of the metadata entered in the ITPC template and information recorded by the camera.  The naming possibilities are endless, allowing you to create files that have meaning for you. 

I prefer to use event name, date of event, and camera filename in my renaming.  For example, I recently covered an American Hockey League game between the Texas Stars and the Manitoba Moose.  A file name from that game looks like this: Texas Stars v Manitoba Moose 2023-10-27 AV3I0635.

Incremental Imports

You’ll likely be importing images several times during a game.  Select the import option for“incremental import” or “eliminate duplicates” in your photo editing software. This prevents importing duplicates, consuming unnecessary memory on your hard drive and adding time to the download.

Caption All Images

All images should be captioned after they are edited to allow the view to understand the action and to aid in metadata searches. At a minimum, this should include the player’s name and number, and significant events of interest(e.g., touchdowns, home runs, goals). 

A proper caption follows the Associate Press guidelines contains no more than two concise sentences and addresses the 5 W’s:

·     Who – name and number of the players, from left to right;

·     What – description of the action;

·     Where – the arena / stadium, city, and state;

·     When - the day of the week, month, day, and year the photograph was taken;

·     Why – describe the context of the action. 

For example, a caption for the hockey game between the Stars and the Moose could read like this: 

“Curtis McKenzie (16) scores in the first period of the AHL game played between the Texas Stars  and the Manitoba Moose on Friday, October 27,2023 at the H-E-B Center in Cedar Park, Texas. Manitoba topped Texas 3-to-2 in a shoot-out. (Andy Nietupski / TTL Sports Media)

Maintain Two Copies of All Images

As described above, the practice of maintaining duplicate copies of data starts with writing images to two memory cards.  This practice  continues after the images have been download to your computer for both the unedited and edited images. 

The downloaded unedited images are usually saved to your computer’s hard drive.  Save a second copy of those images to an external hard drive.  This provides a backup copy of the unedited images should something happen to your computer.  Do not erase or reformat the memory cards until you have two copies of the unedited images. 

Once the editing has been complete, and you have produced your final work, export the work product to two external hard drives. Use two external hard drives because drives can fail or become corrupted overtime. 

Only after the final products have been save should you erase the unedited images from your computer. This removes copies of completed assignment from your computer, freeing storage space. 

You are now left with one copy of the unedited images, and two copies of the edited images stored on external hard drives. 

An alternative to the use of external hard drives is the use of storage solutions “in the cloud.”  Cloud storage is a versatile solution, provided you have sufficient network bandwidth to upload and download files, and you don’t mind paying the monthly fees.

Reformat, Don’t Delete Images

Reformat your camera’s memory cards to remove old images.  Erasing or deleting images will leave file fragments that consumes memory and may corrupt memory cards. 

Backup Computer Weekly

Backup your computer to a dedicate external hard drive.  Begin with a complete backup, which is best done overnight.  Then conduct an incremental backup weekly.

About the Author

Andy Nietupski founded TTL Sport Media in 2015 after a corporate career of business start-ups and turn-arounds.  TTL Sports Media helps sports organizations optimize their business results using the latest digital sales and marketing techniques.  TTL Sports Media publishes thousands of pieces of content annually and curates a catalog of more than 160,000 items on behalf of its client interests. 

Copyright 2024 Andy Nietupski and TTL Sports Media