How do you do it?I've been getting more active with my photography for a few years now and it's starting to get messy.On my hard drive I have my pictures in different folder by year and month, so it's quick and easy to just clear out my SD card.Then in Lightroom I pick the images I like and want to use and put them in a collection. However usually I make one collection per "set" and very rarely group any of the collections. Only have a group for shooting at protests, one for portraits and a few for some multi-week trips I took that resulted in multiple photo-sets.In my context a set is just a collection of images with a similar theme or from the same day that I post on social media or send to friends or whatever.Having an ever growing list of collections seems like a problem waiting to happen, especially if I want to go pro one day, so I was wondering how you guys manage it? The only thing I've seen online that might be a good idea is maybe grouping my collections by location to make them a little easier to sort through when I end up visiting the same place multiple times.
>>4489705From top level down>Settings in-cameraUse 4 folders. 3 for normal use and 1 for tests/ignorable photos. Normally devided either by different days of shooting or regular intervals at a long event>Import RAW files to NAS pool1 (and ooc jpegs/video if applicable)- YYYY- MM-DD (of import) [event name/theme name if applicable]- FOLDER1/FOLDER2/FOLDER3 from in-camera structure- Files have metadata that show when file was created aka the day it was taken if it is different to the MM-DD folder date>Cull here, import good RAWs to local storage Working Folder>Rsync local storage RAWs to seperate NAS pool2 for backups>Return to local storage working folder>Edit & Save JPEGs from RAW>Edited JPEGs go into same folder as backed up RAWs on NAS pool2- YYYY- [Landscape | Astro | Urban (etc.)]- MM-DD>burn DVD-R Archival Grade (Master) with the new backed up RAWs/Edited JPEGs whenever I can fill one for the purpose of archiving or every 3 months. Once I got in the flow it's pretty seemless. I have some days where I shoot several thousand photos, and some where I shoot ten. The structure is logical and predictable with only the edited JPEGs going into a folder system that is subjective (themes instead of dates etc.)>Having an ever growing list of collections seems like a problem waiting to happenI would always fall back to the more predicable YYYY-MM-DD format. Of course this only helps you pinpoint when the photo was imported/created and nothing else, but a bit of manual perusing is not particularly perilious.>The only thing I've seen online that might be a good idea is maybe grouping my collections by locationIf you're appending GPS info to your photos, then sure. Otherwise I see this as more of a hinderance than a benefit.I also organise film negs but my volume is so low that I just mark each binder sheet with the date of completion and a unique number that I also put into my digitized folder so I know which is which.
>>4489705Year > Session / EventMonthly doesn't really make sense to me (and is just bad if you ever can't recall which month an image was from)I do usually have two Snapshot folders for everyday type stuff, one for fist half of the year and second for last halfI'll usually have a Misc folder too for files I'm tinkering around with (think studio comparison tool)All exported files end up within the same Session folder so I don't really have to bother with viewing through LR/C1 if just browsing finished images.Switching to individual session folders instead of importing to one massive LR catalogue has been the best change I've made for both organization and workflow.Trying to link / group up "similar" images from different sessions always seemed like a waste of time to me.
I export to a google docs folder called export. Photos are named YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.I print maybe 2 dozen photos a month and put them in a photo album in order with labels, that's my real organization method.
>>4489728For reference, I shoot ~150k frames a year
