I consider August 13, 2020 to be the first day of my taking Digital Photography seriously. While I had owned a DSLR Camera since late August 2017, I really had no idea what I was doing with it and as a result, I often had images that were either blurry or drastically under or over-exposed. I occasionally managed to get a decent result by fluke, but for the most part I was fumbling around in the dark. After a crash-course in Camera settings while visiting my Family in New Brunswick, I began getting better results almost immediately. So much so that by the time I’d returned to Cape Breton only two and a half weeks later, I had over a hundred images on my Tablet and nearly a hundred more on my Camera’s SD card.
When I arrived home, I transferred the photos to my Laptop and continued shooting. I thought I was über-organized; each day upon returning to the house I’d add the new images to my Photographs folder. Then I realized that I wasn’t really organized at all… Images spanning a time-frame of over three weeks were all in the same folder! How could I possibly zero in on a single Photograph out of all those?
Thus began the task of creating sub-folders and moving the images. Fortunately, I have a pretty decent memory and was able to separate images by date. That worked well until August of 2021, when suddenly dates were repeating. I had to re-organize not only by month and date, but year as well. Thus began another period of review; was this August 20th 2020 or August 20th 2021? By opening the folder and looking at the images I could easily tell, but it still needed better separation.
Finally, last week, due to high gas prices and cold temperatures, I was at home, at my computer when I remembered an image I had taken several years ago. I began to search for this one single image amid a host of folders.
Over time, I have had a number of desktop Computers and Laptops reach the end of their lifespans. What I generally do in such circumstances is pull the Hard Drive out and transfer the files to the new device, thereby saving them. Alas, I often stored them in folders ambiguously named “Saved” or “Saved from old Computer” or “Saved (insert date here).” Pretty poorly filed to be honest.
In the process of searching for that one Photo, I inadvertently stumbled upon several others that bore revisiting; so, I created a folder that I called “Review these” and placed all those images in it. At that time I was called away to participate in a daily ritual known as supper, and I shut the Computer off.
When I returned to my task the following day, I had a plan in place;
First of all, I store all my photos on a secondary 1 Terra-byte Hard Drive in my computer. I also have a 500 Gigabyte Hard Drive attached as a back-up. These have exactly the same content, and any changes I make in one, I duplicate in the other. Since I already create a separate folder each time I go out, my photos were already labeled by month and date, and sometimes location.
Before I did anything else, I created three folders; one labeled 2020, one labeled 2021, and the third labeled 2022. I then began the process of moving the previously created folders into the appropriate year’s folder. That is still ongoing, but headway is being made. I then created a forth folder labeled “Previous” which will hold the images from the past that I consider worth working on and keeping. I DO find it difficult to dispose of all but the most obviously irreparable images. Badly over-blown highlights, low exposure, blurry shots are relatively easy to dump, because they can’t be salvaged, but some may have hope at a future date so I keep them.
So now, I have my photos separated by year and month (or I will, once I’ve completed the task) which will make it easier to zero in on where an image may be found. For example, if I know a Photo was captured in the summer of 2021, I can narrow it down to four folders; June, July, August and September. That saves a lot of time over searching through a single folder named “Photos.”
When I capture images, I save them in both RAW and JPEG format to make future editing easier. When I get home from a shoot, I immediately transfer all the images to a folder with that day’s date and store that in the appropriate year’s folder. Then I create another sub-folder to contain the RAW files. That way, I can use the JPEG for reference while I edit the RAW file. Being in separate folders, they are easier to find and edit. Once the editing is done, I save the final result as a High-Resolution (300dpi) JPEG on my desktop. I then open it in Windows Photo Viewer to see it full-size on my monitor. I may at this point decide to tweak the edit, or continue on and save it as is. Once I have decided to save the image, I make a low-resolution (75 dpi) copy in case I want to upload it to Social Media or e-mail it to someone. Most e-mail programs and all Social Media platforms have limits on how large a file can be, so the low-res version fits much better. There is the added advantage of quality reduction, so if anyone wants to print it, it will be pixelated. I also add my watermark so if it is printed, “Lonnie Jones Photography” will be clearly visible.
This may seem like a lot of work to you, but think of how much work it takes to find a single image that was taken in September of 2009. Having everything separated by year, month and date makes access much easier, less stressful and less frustrating.
Thanks for dropping by and reading. As always, I appreciate your thoughts and comments. Until next week, keep your shutter finger warm and always remember to pack extra batteries.