OK, so we discussed “culling” — the art of getting rid of all but your best images. Next topic concerns how to organize those images so you will be able to easily find them again in the future. Much as it might be nice to rename every image with descriptive names, this is obviously impractical. The next best approach is to create folders which describe their contents. Although images each will contain a hidden date within them, I like to include the date as part of my folder name. I also like to include a brief description, and if you travel a lot you might also wish to include the location.
So, for example, I might have a folder named “2017-07-15 Grandkids at the pool”, or “2017-08-22 Trip to LA”, etc. This is one approach. By the way, if you use the European/Canadian date format of YYYY-MM-DD (or YYYYMMDD) the folders will sort perfectly by date, which is not the case with the U.S. date format.
Depending on how many images you take, there are other ways to organize them. For example, you might want to create folders that are just named by the year (eg. 2016, 2017) and then put all the “event” folders (eg: “August trip to LA”, “Grandkids by the pool”) inside the appropriate “year” folder. Similarly you might want a level of folders categorized by something other than YEAR, such as a LOCATION (for example if you often spend time in a few locations), or family (for example if you have various family branches, married kids, etc.)… The possibilities are endless, as are the choices of whether to put all of the information into a folder name, or to organize them in “trees” of sub-folders as described.
The key — and I can’t emphasize this enough — is to pick a method and STICK TO IT! There is nothing worse than using different methods all the time; you would end up with no organization at all.
If you set up an organized system like described, then you will not have to rename the actual images. And, of course, since you have “culled” through your images as you shoot events, there will not be a ton of images in each “event” folder. Finding events, people, and specific images will now be a breeze!
Next post will deal with how to best PRESERVE these images to ensure you never lose them. These, after all, are future family heirlooms!