What has made my life so much easier?  Identifying all my gear!

 During my first photography workshop as a newbie,  I was in the midst of an editing session. We all sat at a large table at our computers and were downloading images from the day’s shoot. I left two memory cards on the table next to me but the sitting woman next to me took them to put into her memory card wallet. It was an honest mistake but I realized that I needed to be able to mark these small cards as they are so necessary to what we do as photographers. The woman on the other side of me had seen what had transpired and she pushed her memory card over towards me and flipped it over. She had used a permanent marker to write her initials and on the back of the card and numbered it as well. This process also makes it easy to identify your older cards that you may want to rotate out of use as you need to buy new cards.

After looking online for quite a while I finally ordered small squarish customized labels from IdentaMe Labels. I ordered the clothing labels as they stick well and are waterproof. They sell for $16.49 for a book of 36 stickers and are well worth the price. I’ve placed them on Compact Flash cards but not on the smaller SD cards as it makes them too wide to fit in the camera easily. I’ve also placed these labels on my camera bodies, lens, battery chargers, batteries, and in fact on all my gear, everything!

 I also found from workshops that when it’s 4:00am and you’re trying to grab your equipment quickly pre-coffee that it’s easy to mistake tripods. I learned from Rick Sammon on a trip to Iceland that a brightly colored piece of heavy tape can make your day so much easier. I have pink tape swirled down a leg of one tripod and green on the other. Note the use of labels!

Please let me know if you have found this helpful or dispute what I’m recommending here.