The DAM Book

The DAM Book

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.