Visually speaking: An expanded role for digital media management

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Peter Krogh is a photographer, author, publisher, product architect and technologist, best known for ‘The DAM Book’ and related publications. He works at the intersection of photography, technology, rights, commerce, creative practice and cultural semiotics. He has advised many of the major players in photo technology, led workshops and presentations on five continents, built a successful software as a service product, worked with international standards bodies, founded an innovative multimedia publishing company and maintained a successful photography career for more than three decades. In 2012, he was awarded the Library of Congress NDSA Individual Innovation Award.

Abstract: In nearly all types of business endeavour, visual media objects have quietly moved far beyond their traditional role as marketing tools to become first-class documents. At the same time, the complexity of visual media objects is rapidly expanding, and now incorporates dimensionality, data and linkage as essential components.

As institutions grapple with the increasing requirements for the use of visual media objects, the digital asset management (DAM) stack — staff, software, expertise — can play a central role. This paper calls for the scope of the DAM mission to be widened and for DAM tools to meet those requirements. This paper is adapted from the first chapter of ‘The DAM Book 3.0, Digital Asset Management for Photography’ (DAM Useful, 2018, http://www.thedambook.com).

Keywords: photography, visual asset management, rich media, connectivity, mobile, language