Getting Organized

When Tuesday evening came around, I thought that I should put together a Wordless Wednesday post for this week. Then, I remembered, I haven't really used my cameras, much, since New Year's Eve.

I took my last POTD picture, processed it, shared it on social media, and put my D-SLR down. I used the photo in a blog post that I never shared on social media because the message that would announce the blog post would use more words than were contained in the post, itself.

I was only wishing you all a Happy New Year, which I did anyway.

So, when it came to a Wordless Wednesday post, this week, I had nothing. I haven't used my D-SLR. I have taken a couple of snapshots with my friend's Ricoh, but I'm far from filling the roll and sending it off for processing.

I've taken a few snaps with my Canon point-and-shoot, but nothing that could be used for a Wordless Wednesday. I like those images to share a common theme or tell a story.

In fact, apart from two images that I captured with my smartphone, I haven't shared any new photographs at all on this blog. Every other image was either captured in 2017 or earlier, or were images that I took from Google searches.

My drought of photo taking will come to an end, tomorrow (Friday), when I post my next photo from my black-and-white project.

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon and evening, organizing my photo library. I'm highly disorganized when it comes to keeping track of my photos. When I have pulled the image files from my camera and have processed them, I create a file folder with the date that the photos were shot—say, 20180111, for today—and would then provide a brief description of the subjects on the files. That way, my photos would be in folders that displayed in chronological order.

Filing photos by date is not a good way to organize photos. I have to remember when I took the image and hope that the description that accompanies the date helps. But the problem is that as the years go on, I can't remember when I took a photo: Did I shoot my Bate Island Project in 2012 or 2013? When was I in Scotland?

I tend to spend a lot of time looking for photos with this system.

So, when I finished work, yesterday, I went into my files and created a folder structure that works more like a database. Folders are listed according to the subject, not the date. For example, I have a Travel folder, which contains subfolders for destinations my family and I have visited, such as Cuba, Montreal, or Arizona. Some folders, such as France, contain more folders, for Paris, Loire, Juno Beach, and other towns or regions.

Photos can be in more than one folder: for example, a foggy image of Parliament Hill can be found in my Ottawa\Parliament Hill folder and in my Fog folder. I realize that duplicate files will take more storage space but I think this will make it easier for me to find images.

And storage space is cheap.

So, while I'm not shooting as much as I used to, I'm working with my photos a lot more as I get them organized.

Do you have a tried-and-true system for organizing photos?