Old Files

Several years ago, I thought I would get organized with my photos and store them, not by date or file name, but by subject. I have created a photo database where my image files are stored in folders that are marked Sunsets or Waterfalls, or Family.

Folders can contain subfolders: Birds are further broken down to Chickadees or Cardinals. Family are divided into individuals if they are the only ones in the photo.

Photos can be stored in more than one location. For example, the following photo is stored under Churches and again, in Travel > France > Paris.

This system of organization has been helpful in quickly finding an image, especially when I'm looking for something to go with a blog post. I'm less likely to find a photo if it's stored by date, and if I were to go by the file name that the camera assigns to it, there's no way I'd be able to find anything.

It took me a long time to go through old photos and organize the folders, but now that it's completed it's really easy for me to add new photos that I shoot. But the database is not perfect and, as I sometimes discover, it's not complete.

I keep all of my photos on external storage devices and, before I created this system, my photos were stored by date, in folders that briefly described what is in them (for example, Kid 1 Soccer Tournament). But a folder held all of the images from a particular day and I could have attended several events on that day, which meant that the images could be a hodge-podge of various things.

It could take me hours to find a particular photograph.

I thought I had moved all of my photos into the new storage system, but every once and a while, I remember a photo that I had taken but can't find it in the database. Did I delete the photo? Did I accidentally stick it in the wrong directory?

The other day, when I was writing my post about Toastmasters, I thought I had taken a photo of my club's banner, that I had photos of the lectern, and possibly a photo that someone had taken of me, presenting a speech.

There is no Toastmasters folder. There is nothing in my Special Events directory. I couldn't find a single image for Toastmasters so I had to acquire one from an open source site. I go there whenever I cannot find a suitable image in my database that I can use for a blog post.

After I published yesterday's post, I noticed a red box, the size of a cigarette pack, behind the computer monitor. It was my original storage device, the one where I had kept all of my photos before my new system. I plugged it into my laptop and looked inside.

There are still hundreds of photos that I haven't yet organized. After some initial searching, I found a Toastmasters folder, but it held photos that I had captured at a Christmas party: candid shots of individual members; pictures of groups, laughing or sitting at tables; me, with an arm around a fellow Toastmaster, posing for the camera. Nothing that would have helped yesterday's post.

I'm sure there's a suitable photo in there, somewhere.

But there are still lots of family shots, lots of vacation shots, lots of nature shots. Hundreds, maybe thousands of photos that still remain unorganized. I must have taken a break form my organizing and then simply forgotten.

Looking at some of the photos gave me ideas for future blog posts. As I work on finding these images a proper home, I'll get to writing, too.

Stay tuned.