If you don’t know what DAM is, I could be rude and suggest you are not a serious photographer. Now I won’t because I am a polite boy, but really, if you are serious about digital photography, you simply have to be serious about DAM.
Basically, it involves everything between getting your images in on to your computer, through to when they are finally archived safely in various locations. It involves rating, labelling, keywording, file formats, catalogues, virtual sets, back ups and a whole lot more. It is the integration between Photoshop, a browser such as Bridge, and catalogue software such as iview Media Pro (now Microsoft Expression Media).
With DAM you are building value to a collection of images by organising them in a way that builds that value. Not only for you as a photographer, but also for your clients.
The bible is The Dam Book by Peter Krogh. Check out the website of course. And the forum. DAM is not a simple concept. Well, conceptually it is simple enough, but in practice it’s not simple. You might need to read the book several times and absorb it for months before doing the painstking work of getting your images into shape. yeah, it’s Boot Camp for digital images alright. I wish I’d read about it when I first bought my digital camera, not a year and 10,000 images later.
I will hazard a guess though - read the book and you’ll say at some point - “damn.. why haven’t I heard of this before”… 
Technorati Tags: DAM, digital asset management, Peter Krogh
Not that I have any chance at all, but if you stumble across this post and have a kind heart, could you consider voting for me at the current Photoblog Awards? You need to register, but as long as you are not a total technophobe, it takes about 1 minute. Recognition of having a good blog is one thing, but more importantly for me at this stage is the encouragement to keep it going. I get lots of visits, but hardly any comments on my blog, which is at times quite discouraging. I could have used Flickr instead I suppose if comments was everything for me, but if you know my opinion of Flickr, you understand why. The idea that people are keeping an eye on my work is something that motivates me. SO any publicity is good isn’t it. It gets more bums on seats and hopefully more comments.
Anyway, if you have time, give me a vote!
Sometimes words tell the truth. Remember this.
*Before I go any further, I would like to point out that I understand the irony of writing about how boring backpackers are in a blog called “The Backpacker”. After all, travel blogs are a modern-day curse for friends of travellers everywhere - not content to send letters, postcards, or even emails anymore, we now feel compelled to commit our every long bus trip and dodgy meal to the public domain of cyberspace, and expect our friends to pore over them as obsessively as we write them.
Just as Coco warned me, no one cares much about your adventures unless they’ve been to wherever it is you’re wanking on about, or they know the people you were travelling with. Sure, your relatives might put up with looking at a few photos, but everyone else will be bored witless, and the less subtle will let you know all about it. (”Wow, you took 400 photos of African landscapes? They’re all crap.”
* from the Sydney Morning Herald website
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