Blake Heathcote didn’t so much come to documentary photography — he inherited it. His grandfather, who served in both World Wars, was 2IC (second in command) for the Historical Unit of the Canadian army. As such, he was, among other things, the art director for Canadian war artists. Heathcote’s grandfather had compiled a vast collection of photographs, as well as sketches and watercolors from the war years.

Heathcote started there, thinking he’d taken on the relatively simple task of scanning his grandfather’s collection to preserve it. But after a conversation with his father (who’d served in WWII), Blake foresaw a more intriguing challenge - one that would become a calling. He began interviewing veterans on digital video to recapture the sense of these remarkable men and women telling their stories in their own words. His first book, Testaments of Honour - Personal Histories of Canada’s War Veterans, is a result of the first 50 of his interviews.

To date, he has shot 700 hours of video that has to be edited and organized. It’s a daunting task.

While Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation has compiled interviews of over 50,000 holocaust victims, working with a network of people around the world (and millions of dollars in support), Heathcote works on his own. He is now working to collaborate with the Canadian War Museum and Veterans’ Affairs, both of which wish to have these video testaments in their online resources.

Currently, the Testaments of Honour archive contains approximately 400 interviews - about 700 hours of digital video - and nearly 8,000 photographs and 1,500 documents.

"The challenge is that there is so much information out there. Archiving the information isn’t the problem, but where do you start?"

Heathcote has been approached by the Imperial War Museum in London and the Second World War Experience Museum in Yorkshire, both of which have expressed interest in this rather unique collection of the Canadian veteran’s experience. In June of 2004, he traveled to Normandy for the 60th Anniversary of D-Day where his interviews and photographs are on display at the Juno Beach Centre, the staging area for the Canadian troops who landed on D-Day. At that museum, visitors can view digital videos, each about two minutes long. To date, he has shot 700 hours of video that has to be edited and organized. It’s a daunting task.

Blake Heathcote had experimented with photo management tools such as Extensis, Portfolio and iPhoto. At that time he was looking for a management solution, he was also becoming increasingly sensitive to the importance of metadata: being able to embed information about images that would serve as labels when he went to retrieve them. He knew that Adobe Photoshop offered that basic ability.

He discovered that iView MediaPro would allow him to import back into the original photos (with or without Adobe Photoshop) and was able to do it in a fraction of the time.

Heathcote told us that while he finds Adobe Photoshop’s metadata capabilities modest, he has found that iView MediaPro has managed to take full advantage of its abilities. And metadata is at the heart of everything he’s working on - from the color workspace in which the photo was created to the information associated with it. Not to mention the tracking of the thousands of images: a task that he is currently wrestling with as he prepares his new book, A Soldier’s View, to be published by Random House Canada in the fall of 2005.

When he first got started, synchronizing information to images was not so critical. He might scan 100 photos and then try to keep them in a file. Once he got beyond 2,000 photos, however, the need for metadata was clear.

"Capturing information at the moment of cataloguing is key," Heathcote reports. "Trying to go back to sort out data is tough. Photographers want technical data; that plays a minor role in my photo archiving, but an essential role in the cataloguing of video clips. For me, keyword cross-referencing is the most critical element. I want to remember the date, month, place and this photo was of the bombed out theatre in Calvados taken by Alex Gray in March 1945. There’s nothing worse than reviewing this vast collection of photos and wondering, ‘Who was that guy? And where did this happen?’

With iView MediaPro, it’s easy for me to embed key descriptors in the file along with graphic image itself. So whatever happens to that picture from now on - it’s going to have as much relevant information in it. Future viewers can find out everything about it; they can effectively retrace one’s steps and track for the future. I can even embed web site information and the fact that a copyright mark should be printed on it. The information will always be there.

The ability to embed key information into each photo has made all the difference to Heathcote. He finds it especially important because he is running a nonprofit organization getting ready to present his next book of 700+ photographs and captions.

Heathcote finds iView MediaPro’s batch processing function invaluable, because he has been able to update "a whole whack of things extremely quickly and accurately."

The synchronize function allows you to make all your work and mistakes in iView MediaPro, correct, and then synchronize with original images. It’s very secure working in the iView environment with that ability to confirm that everything’s right. You can also import from text files, something you can’t do in any other program. And only when you tell it to, iView will update the originals.

In a recent meeting with his publisher Random House, Heathcote was able to present his 14 GB catalog via a slide show on his laptop using iView MediaPro. The catalog system enabled him to browse through the archive, and at any given moment display relevant pictorial or editorial information associated with a given image. He and his publisher found the meeting extremely productive. As an image was determined to be useful, he could simply drag its thumbnail into a new sub-catalog, and then generate a CD-ROM copy to circulate amongst the editors and graphic designers for the book.

Heathcote’s interests continue to expand. Today he’s looking at the inherent wealth of information and for new ways of being able to share and extend knowledge of history and personal experience.

"What I’m wrestling with all the time is trying to find a way and means of making it easy and meaningful for people to look at the vast array of photos, documents and secondary material that I come across in my travels. It can empower people tremendously to know that metadata has the potential to allow them to create their own books - classroom lessons, and so forth. Using such a system of catalogs and searching by keywords enables you to view the world in so many different dimensions.

"Take any given topic and you can probably identify five key areas: name, branch of service, theatre of war, timeline, and a thematic wildcard search. Those five things allow you to narrow down search quickly. It streamlines the user’s ability to utilize the most common criteria - and that is facilitated in great depth in iView MediaPro.

"Metadata is essential to what I do. I am always thinking in context of the end-user, and always looking to apply the most meaningful interface. Imagine taking various catalogued fragments and then simply putting them into a context - from interview fragments, photos, maps, documents, video clips, and assembling an individual historical storyline. You can literally bring history to life. Such activities create a framework, a common window into the experience of humanity."