Finally started the mammoth task of indexing my aviation photo’s. Picked up the hobby again in 2002 when I, from then on, concentrated on civil airliners photography. Now, 7 years down the line and some 10.000 photo’s further I can’t remember which, where and when.

There are several options to index your collection, for instance use the metadata in Lightroom. Because I want to query the data in all kinds of ways I decided to build my own application. It’s a custom made and especially tailor made application, but maybe of use to other enthusiasts.

A must for this application was the one screen interface and the handling of raw photo’s.  as can be seen on the screenshot the process and one screen interface is simple.

Select photo -> view / zoom (for instance to read the serial) -> enter meta data -> Save

The data is saved to the database and added to the filename.

Processing a raw photo was a challenge, because .net can’t handle these extensions. To resolve this I used the Photoshop interop DLL to real-time decode the raw image in the background.

Other features, include:
- Real-time database lookup when serial number is entered. Other sightings are displayed onscreen.
- Auto complete functions on aircraft and airline textboxes.
- EXIF info is displayed and the date field is filled automatically by using the EXIF date taken property.

The application is not publicly available, but if you’re interested mail me.