Sports/MotorSports Photographers.....a question about sorting/tagging?

Hello all!

Im trying to improve and be as efficient as possible with my time, so I figured I'd come onto the forum here and ask a question regarding my current workflow.

Im currently trying my hand in trackday photography, as is, sales arent that great and Im trying to make life easier for the potential customers in finding their pictures faster, hoping this will ultimately lead to more sales.**More on this later**

Here's my current workflow:

1) All photo's taken throughout the day get copied to my PSD.

2) During my drive home, I transfer all images of the day (approx. 2500-3000) onto my laptop. Ive noticed about 6GB's takes about 30+ minutes. The ONLY reason why I do this is to expedite transfer of said images onto my desktop as soon as I get home via eSata cable from laptop to ext HD which is linked up to my desktop, literally takes minutes.

3) Now for the labor intensive part, I sift through every image deleting all OOF or poorly composed shots. I usually break them up into difernt folders by groups/sessions (ie...nov/int/adv) while doing all this.

4) I batch process each folder separately reducing the image size to make uploading to my site much faster, then each resized fold gets uploaded.

5) No pp'ing until an order is filled.

Up until recently, Ive always used Windows Photo Gallery for deleting and sometimes rating pics. Now, Im using Windows Live Photo Gallery since it has a publish feature which is compatable with my zenfolio site making uploading all my images easier.

Now, for my question that I began above. Im trying to figure out the best way to go about sorting through thousands of pictures and grouping them by race number or bike color. For an example, if I took 75 pics of some racer with the number 123 I want to be able to make a folder for each racer on my site, making life easier for them but not wanting to be up all night doing either.

I asked this question on another forum in an older thread that really didnt give me what I was looking for. They brought up code replacement....and if Im understanding it correctly, that'd be great if I want to write a code for the race number/racer name relationship but that's not what Im trying to do.

I believe tagging is the proper way of achieving what Im asking I just dont know the best way to use it and in which program.

Not feeling any love out there.

fortisi876 wrote in post #8085619
Not feeling any love out there.

I think you might not be getting a response due to the software. Most don't use Microsoft Photo Gallery for tagging. Most use Lightroom, or Bridge, or Aperture, Elements, etc.

I use LR and would be happy to help you out there, but I have no idea about Photo Gallery.

I do track photography at a local track on the weekends and I unfortunately have no answer either! I would love to be able to 'tag' my photos so drivers could 'search' out just their shots but it just hasn't happened..

My workflow is uploading the pics onto home computer, editing them with Elements, then hosting them w/ Photo Reflect (for online orders) by class and date (I'm assuming your motorcross and I don't know about the classes they have there - I am doing stock cars and our track has 5 classes).. then I order what copies I wish to take to the track, sort them by class, put them in photo binders by car # (each binder a different class) and that is how I do track sales.

I doubt any of that was helpful to you but just some insight as to how someone else does it. Drivers still have to navigate through a lot of photos online to see theirs but at least they are divided up by class and the date of the race.

Most of my sales are from at the track where they are organized at least by car # and class.

A program Photo Mechanic may be of help to you, I use this to tag a sort, I work on deadline and this program is fast at this, it also has templates for uploading to different sites (flicker, zenfolio, smugmug) to name a few,you can D/L a trial version here http://www.camerabits.​com/site/index.html

Thnx for the replies folks!

Just for clarification, Im open to utilizing/purchasing any program that will help me succeed in a more efficient time. Gotta research that PM program it keeps coming up.

I was just curious about other photogs workflow after an event, that's all.

In Adobe lightroom you can flag pictures, set a color to the pictures (red, yellow, green, blue, purple and white) and rate them. Then you can filter the pictures by flagged, color or rating.

It sounds like lightroom would fit you perfectly as you can load all the pictures into the filmstrip along the bottom, you can quickly sort all the photos and assign a color to them, delete the bad ones from the gallery or from disk all together and then export them by groups using filtered selections. As a bonus you can do 90% of your processing within the program.