On the Importance of Metadata for Images and Movies

One of the most difficult, annoying, and most put off chores of maintaining photos and images is keeping metadata records of some sort. In this digital era, the potential power of keeping metadata is enormous, but still difficult to keep up with a digital lifestyle.

Metadata is data about data. For images, that would include standard EXIF data, like camera information, and the who, what, where, and when of the image itself. Tools exist for attaching these data to images, less so for movies.

Why bother with metadata? Most people don't. However, the reality is that recording metadata isn't so much for you - the person who took the photo. The metadata is for other people. Most people know know the w's of the images they take already and assume that they will remember what the photo is about. Of course, your grandchildern won't know who those people are or why you bothered to take their picture. It's possible they won't care, but they certainly won't care if they don't know anything about the photo.

Over the last 4-5 years, I've been digitizing old slides and photos; mine, my mother's, and my mother-in-law's. It's rather painful to work through these images when there's no information. Sometimes there are recognizable landmarks, date stamps, or quick notes written on the back, but most info is very thin to non-existent. In many cases, the person who took the photo is no longer living, so there's no one to ask. One example was a photo of a tree and the only info written on it was "tree". It was apparently interesting enough to take the picture, but I'm sure that the people who took the photo knew why they took it... but I'll never know.

I suspect many of these images without any metadata will persist in our family for years to come until someone wises up and realizes that without the proper data, it doesn't mean much of anything.