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
I recently bought a book, which, even though I’m not even half way through it, I believe is an essential purchase for anyone serious about photography, whether amateur or professional. The book is called The DAM Book, and the topic is, naturally enough, Digital Asset Management. It’s basically about having a system in place to organise the workflow of digital images, from when they come on to the computer from the camera, to when they are finally archived. Many photographers who have been working with digital cameras for a few years now have amassed thousands of files. Possibly even hundreds of thousands. Without a solid DAM system in place, there’s no way any collection will be organised, easy to find pictures in, or will the workflow be consistent and streamlined. That’s what DAM is all about.
The guru for this process is Peter Krogh. His book is the bible for DAM. He also travels around the world giving seminars on the subject. There is of course a website: www.thedambook.com. I am in the process of reading “The DAM Book” right now, and my initial impression of DAM is this: it’s going to be painful, it’s going to take a long time to reorganise all my files and restructure my workflow. But in the long run, it’s definitely going to be worth it. Already I have trouble finding images. I am a reasonably organised type of person as it is, and I have instinctively incorporated some of the DAM principles into my own workflow (the idea of buckets as a backup concept primarily), but the whole thing has just been a little daunting until now. Now it’s very daunting But at least now I can see the benefits of such a system, and that how without it, I can forget about being a organised, proficient professional.
I will be going to one of his seminars in May, and I’m nowhere near even finishing the book yet, so a lot of work is ahead of me. I’ll update on this topic as I get further into it.
Technorati Tags: DAM, digital asset management, Peter Krogh, The DAM Book, digital photography workflow
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