25,000 photos

After a research/reference trip, I usually have lots of photo reference. With two cameras shooting in Africa, I came home with over 25,000 photos and videos.
How does one even start sorting through such a volume?

For years I have used Phase One Media Pro as my photo organizer. There are many on the market but I found this easy to use and the price reasonable. (and no, I do not work for them!)

My first step is to set up a catalog. For the Africa trip, I made a blank catalog with every bird, mammal,  and reptile that I saw listed under the catalog sets. I then import the photos which turn them into metafiles for quick and easy viewing. The original files are unchanged and from the catalog, it shows me the location of the original file.

Below is a screen shot of thumbnails.

Each thumbnail can be opened to the media size which fills the screen. From thumbnails and media viewing, I can see if I might want to include the image for reference when building a painting. At a later date, I'll start dragging images into the appropriate catalog set for quick and easy sorting of species and locations.
The 84.9 GB file of photos from one camera made a catalog of 1.8 GB
The 140 GB file of photos and videos from the other camera made a catalog of 1.4 GB.
The original images are untouched.
Even though the catalog images are much smaller, I can still see all the detail in the media size and have enough information to know if I want to look at the original photo.

That's all the technical stuff. How do I decide what to paint first?
I knew as soon as I saw them, they would be one of the first things I would paint. Namibia's Skeleton Coast star dunes.  Seeing them before and during sunrise was breathtaking. Mauves turned to pink to bright orange. I thought of sand dunes as boring flat yellow but the sharp edges of these dunes created brilliant purples and blues in the shadows. Wow. Add to that, probably my favorite antelope, gemsbok can call this place home. We saw them throughout this region.

Time to look at all the dune photos and every gemsbok photo. I'll also go back to my notebook filled with details. For good color reference, I might even have some sand still in my sneakers from climbing Dune 45!     ;)