File/Directory/Category Structure

[TimmyTheTag]

I'm just starting to get into wildlife and nature photography so I don't have a huge amount of photos yet. So before I get too many I was looking at how I can organize my pictures better before it gets out of hand. Also, I'm not that good at identifying the exact species, but with practice and research that will come eventually!

So, can some of you share your file naming and directory/folder methods that you use to organize your photos? What about keywords? For reference as far as software I have and use -- Nikon ViewNX, Nikon CaptureNX and CS3.

Thanks everyone!
Dave

[Sentinel Chicken]

This past thread had some useful information that I used.

[TimmyTheTag]

JP, Thanks. I saw that searching before I posted. I don't have Lightroom, so that's out. And since I'm just an enthusiast I don't have the volume like most of these people have. However, I want there to be some "sense" to my file & folder structure. This is to be after I sort/delete and edit pictures. Up until then I keep in my D300 Folder in folders by date created by Nikon Transfer when downloaded from card.

Do I start by year, then month, then subject or place, and finally filename. I'm not sure about the month as I don't think I shoot enough for that.

I'm hoping to get advice and suggestions more from the nature & wildlilfe shooters (Hint, Hint )

[jeffkohn]

I have a folder for each year. Under that, for each shoot I have a folder. THe shoot name combines the year, month, and 'Job Code' which is term Breezedownloader Pro uses for a tag you can put whatever you want into, in order to better identify the shoot.

So I might have folders like this under my 2009 folder:

2009_03 - Austin County Wildflowers
2009_04 - New Mexico Trip

The nice thing about this is that it sorts the shoots chronologically, which is most often how I want to look stuff up. I used to encode the day as well as year/month in the folder name. But what I found was that for multi-day trips I didn't really want each day's shoot to go in a separate folder. Somebody shooting higher volume might want their images grouped with day as well, though.

[Tim T]

David, it's good to think about this up front. I didn't and now have tons of photo's that aren't very well orgainized and very difficult to find an old shot. Here is what I do now.

1) I download my photo's into individual folders based on where I was that day, ie. "High Island 3-1-09"
2) Delete unwanted photo's
3) In Bridge under Edit: "select all photo's"
4) Under tools: "Batch rename" which will rename all of the photo's selected
5) I use "sequential number_location_date", ie. 0832_High Island_03012009

[TimmyTheTag]

Good tips Jeff and Tim. Thanks and keep them coming.

[Sentinel Chicken]

Originally Posted by TimmyTheTag

JP, Thanks. I saw that searching before I posted. I don't have Lightroom, so that's out. And since I'm just an enthusiast I don't have the volume like most of these people have. However, I want there to be some "sense" to my file & folder structure. This is to be after I sort/delete and edit pictures. Up until then I keep in my D300 Folder in folders by date created by Nikon Transfer when downloaded from card.

Do I start by year, then month, then subject or place, and finally filename. I'm not sure about the month as I don't think I shoot enough for that.

I'm hoping to get advice and suggestions more from the nature & wildlilfe shooters (Hint, Hint )

I don't shoot a lot of wildlife (going to have to *work* on that), but in my aviation shots that I do as a hobby I have a similar system suggested here as I don't have Lightroom either.

Each folder with a given days' pictures is given a location_date_sequential number. So for example, "DAL_090405_02" tells me that that folder has shots from Dallas Love Field, April 5, 2009, and it's the second folder of shots from that day. This way my folders are arranged first by location (it's easier for me to find things that way) then by date.

[sandboa]

I don't use the date based system for a simple reason - I rarely need to find a photo I shot on a particular day or at a particular location. When I need to find a photo, I usually need to find a photo of a particular subject. So I group my photos by subject.

For nature photos, I have a folder for plants, birds, mammals, inverts, reptiles, amphibians and fish. In some folders I have sub-folders for the major groups, so within the Reptiles I have a subfolder of Snakes, Lizards, Crocodilians, and Turtles. In the snakes folder I have them broken up into families since I have a LOT of snake photos. Birds are broken up into orders somewhat, depending on what I have lots of photos of.

The advantage to this system is you could put all your bird shots in one folder and start adding subfolders as the need arises. So if you end up with a lot of Ardeids (Herons/Egrets), you make a new subfolder and move the Heron and Egret photos into there. The rest of your miscellaneous bird photos stay in the main "birds" folder.

The reason I like this system is that the file already has the date in it (backed up in the EXIF file) and I can put the location in as a keyword or add it to the EXIF if I wanted to search for files from a particular location.

sandboa added 147 Minutes and 39 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

Another interesting discussion of this was this series of posts -

http://www.texasphotoforum.com/forum...ad.php?t=92982

[TimmyTheTag]

Chris, awesome info. Just what I was looking for. From the responses and the reference post you gave me (I did a search and didn't see that one!), this should get me going.

My biggest problem is identifying what I'm shooting! I need to get a guide and when all else fails I will just post the image here!

You guys are great and thanks to all of you!!!

Dave