John Parminter is photographer of the month for June

I've just been spending a happy half hour or so preparing for my next trip to the lake district by enjoying the photography of John Parminter.  His website viewlakeland.com is well worth a visit.

Devoke Water Ruins
by John Parminter

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Previous Photographers of the Month

New Canvas Print options.

I have just updated all the galleries on the site as we now offer the option of Gallery quality canvas wraps.  So all pictures on the site are now available as:

• 18 x 12 inch Limited Edition Mounted print      £75      
• 18 x 12 inch Limited Edition Framed & Mounted print     £125     
• 16 x 24 inch Limited Edition Canvas wrap   £90    
• 24 x 36 inch Limited Edition Canvas     £150

 Discounts are available for multiple purchases.

Why Two Lightroom Catalogs ?

Following my post on automatically deleting Lightroom backups, I was asked why I have two different Lightroom catalogs.  Well the reason for this is that I like to separate my recent images from my archive of images.

My working catalogue contains the images I am currently working on and the archive contains images that are finished.  Once a month I move the images from the previous month to the archive.

There are a few reasons for me working in this way.  The first is that I find the process of archiving images stops me constantly looking at shots to see if there is any way I can improve them.  If I didn't do that I would still be looking at shots I took in may 2006 thinking "I wonder what that looks like in B&W".

The other main reason, is that it  is really easy to put off keywording and classifying images,  as part of the archival process I like to make sure that they are all classified correctly.  My checklist for archiving is:

• Delete all the images that don't make the grade
• Keyword every image with the location it was taken
• Keyword any shots to identify any dogs & people.
• Apply Star ratings.
• Add Title & Descriptions to the good ones.
• ctrl + A and ctrl + s to write the metadata to the files
• Export the files to a new library
• Import in to the Archive.
• Add pictures to the collections for my various websites

Am I unusual in using multiple catalogues or  is it a common thing.  Why not leave a comment & let me know how you use Lightroom catalogues.

Images of Suffolk

After the run away success of our Images Of Essex website, there really was only one way to go.. Suffolk!

Dave Peck and myself have teamed up with the very talented Gary Horner to create a website devoted to Images of Suffolk.

Winter sunrise on Herringfleet Marshes

by Gary Horner

The Site features a collection of galleries organised by season and a map of Suffolk to help you find photographs of your favourite location.

The site was created using foliopic a new service providing websites for photographers and artists. Why not have a look at the site & let me know what you think in the comments section.

Leanne Graham is photographer of the month for May

You see I like photography and I like dogs. But which one is better? There's only one way to find out....

Visit ShortDog Photography!!!
I have been enjoying the work of Leanne Graham and her dog photography.

by Leanne Graham

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Previous Photographers of the Month

KG Images - new site design

My good friend and one third of ImagesOfEssex, Keving Goodchild has just completely overhauled his website.

Thre are lots of lovely new images on there from around the UK and further afield.

Snake and Ladder

(by Kevin Goodchild)

I was involved in the design of the site,  so why not take a look and leave a comment below as to what you think about it.

Deleting old Lightroom backups

Lightroom is a nicely thought out application and one of it's nice thoughts is that it reminds you to backup your Lightroom database on a regular basis. This is a good thing, you should listen to it's advice and make sure you take those backups regularly.

If you always cancel out of the backup dialogue, or worst still have disabled it ,just delete your Lightroom catalogue now.  This will save all the hassle of waiting till something goes wrong with your hardware/software/mind. Always, always make sure you have a backup.

The only problem with the Lightroom backup system is that it can start to fill up your hard disk with lots of old copies of your catalogues. It would be nice if there was away to automatically limit it to only keeping 2 months or so worth of backups.  Well after a quick bit of fettling I worked out a way to do this.

The instructions below are for windows PCs, if you've got a Mac there is probably some animated icon of Steve jobs you can click on and all your problems will be solved.

1.First identify what directories you are backing up to.  These are usually in a folder called Backups inside the directory where your caltalouge lives In my case they are:
D:\Catalogs\Lightroom\Backups
and
D:\Catalogs\Lightroom\Archive\Backups

2. Open Notepad:

• In XP choose Start>Run and type notepad click OK.
• in Vista/Windows 7 just type notepad in the search box & click on the notepad icon

3. Paste in the following code:

forfiles /p "D:\Catalogs\Lightroom\Backups" /c "cmd /c rd @file /s /q" /d -60


replace D:\Catalogs\Lightroom\Backups with path to your backups you found in step 1
Repeat for each of the folders you found in step 1.
My final file looks like this:

forfiles /p "D:\Catalogs\Lightroom\Backups" /c "cmd /c rd @file /s /q" /d -60
forfiles /p "D:\Catalogs\Lightroom\Archive\Backups" /c "cmd /c rd @file /s /q" /d -60


Note: the -60 at the end means "delet backups older than 60 days" you can edit this to any number of days you like.

3. Save the file as DeleteLRBackups.bat (the .bat bit is very important) in a c:\batch folder (if you don't have one create it).

4. Now all you need to do is schedule this as a task to run whenever you like.

• how to schedule a task in XP
• how to schedule a task in Vista
• how to schedule a task in Windows 7