Archiving Photos – Greg McMillan
Computers are a wonderful thing, but they can be so intimidating at times. This tutorial began in my mind as the simple task of creating a new folder to store some freshly taken photos, but then I realized that there are bound to be a number of ways to archive our photos. I will outline the method that I have adopted over the years. I think it’s a fairly logical approach and of course, it can always be tweaked to suit your own style.
When creating an archiving system on a computer, the first thing I do before I even import my photos from my camera is start a new folder for storing the images I just took. In your Pictures folder, you can either click on the New Folder button in the menu at the top of the window as illustrated in the first image below, or just 1. right click anywhere in the window space and 2. select New, then when the pop-out menu comes up, 3. select Folder as in the second image.
Then, you can give your folder a name.
This is where the archiving style comes in. I create a new folder for every time I go out shooting, even if it’s just a few snapshots of some flowers in the back yard. The folder name will contain the date and the location that the photos were taken. For example, if I was to go a birthday party, the folder name may look like this: “2009-11-27 John Doe’s Birthday”. This tells me that the pictures were taken on November 27 at John Doe’s birthday party, and when I want to look them up on the computer at a later date, I just type in “birthday” in my search and they will show up in the results rather quickly.
I like to have folders made for each year so they can be kept in chronological order. It’s a great way to look back through your photos to see how you’ve progressed. My folder structure looks like this:
As mentioned this archiving system took me a little while to develop and I think it works pretty well. Everyone has their own personal taste when it comes to organising their images, but if you’re looking for somewhere to start, this might help you out.
Owen Sound Camera Club 