Catalogue organization

[hirohhhh]

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Since I got my M10-R I noticed I'm shooting much more than with my SL2. That means I have a bunch of random photos around the house, coffee shop, street, even in the car. I used my SL2 mostly only when I go out intentionally to shoot something, or when I'm shooting in my studio. And I have very well organized LrC catalogue sorted by date and named by the event (2021-10-21 Trip to XXX). Now with all these random photos, it looks like a mess, pretty much like my phone library, which I mostly use to snap random things around me. How do you organize these photos? I cannot name them by the event because there was no event. I have 30 different locations and subjects shoot in the same day. Sometimes I don't import my photos for days and then when I import them into LrC, I have to deal with hundreds of random photos. I know, I can use keywords for each photo, but really how do I name the albums, keeping the consistency of my catalogue that I keep organized for years

One way is just to use date as an album name, without description (eg: 2021-10-21) and then use keywords for each photo. Another is to separate each day into few albums and group photos by the location or the subject, but that will quickly pile a huge amount of albums with just one or few photos in each.

Any ideas?

Edited October 26, 2021 by hirohhhh

[jdlaing]

I shoot in a lot of different locations. I use the location and date as a file storage method. I return to h same locations often and the date helps me find hem later.

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[Chuck Albertson]

My Lightroom catalogue is organized by date (folders) and then I use keywords and other metadata (country, city, location, specific words in captions) to set up Collections within that.

[KFo]

Not in love with LR but use it as my mobile platform on the iPad.  I also use C1 on macOS and organize in the same fashion as below:

TL;DR <get your &*^% together and quit worrying. devote your energy to being creative, not thinking about random photos.  to make this happen, get organized in some way but have the discipline to keyword your good work so you can find it later with a search.>

IF you want to know how I do it…

“00000 Descriptive Name”   <<<< this is the basic name of an album.  I create the number when I create the album.  The descriptive name is sometimes as simple as “Barcelona Street” sometimes very specific to an outing or event.

• Everything (each DNG, JPG) already has date information attached to it so I don’t waste time adding dates to the albums.  Dates are searchable anyway.
• I don’t care if there are only seven images in an album.  It only matters to your thinking if you let it.
• Some albums have ZERO keepers.  It doesn’t matter.
• Keyword or tag keepers.  Later, if I want to want to find more images from that event, I have the album name and the date from the keeper to use for a search.
• Output files (JPG, DNG, TIFF, whatever) using the same naming convention with additional information on the end.  For example “00000 Barcelona Street full size JPG”, “00000 Barcelona Street TIFF”, “00000 Barcelona Street iphone RES JPG”, etc.  The additional information relates to the file format and use for the files.
• I only output keepers!

CRITICAL things to remember:

1. Do this on a rhythm.  For me I download from SD cards at least once a week. Typically after specific outings. Just to frame this a little, I shoot everyday.  Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  I use a couple different cameras depending on what I’m doing.  It’s not unusual for me to have 1000 images in a week timeframe if I out shooting in a focused fashion.
2. Be a ruthless selector of KEEPERS.
3. KEYWORD! These are searchable across platforms (macOS, WIN, iPhone, etc).  This gets you back to any number of photos of “matt” or “baby shower” or “bridges”.
4. ONLY KEYWORD the KEEPERS! This is a massive labor savings and once you start doing it this way, you’ll realize that you’ve lost nothing
5. ONLY output KEEPERS!
6. ALWAYS finalize and output your KEEPERS.  Whatever your output is, do it.  This puts an end to a disc drive full of unorganized random images.
7. Once you OUTPUT the KEEPERS you are done with those images.  Make sure everything is copied and backed up then delete the images from your computer leaving them on searchable backup/copy media.  This way you don’t waste time revisiting images.  If something needs re-editing in the future, you’ll deal with that then.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s actually easy and much quicker that you can imagine.  Once you start doing this and focusing only on keepers you’ll be able to locate and share images easily.

Best luck, questions?