Advice/Suggestions/Tips for a College Student organizing his photos

[SirPhil]

I realize there is no "right" or "wrong" answer to the question. But I'm tired of the headaches and just want something that won't get complicated over time. Thus, please offer any and all advice/suggestions/tips.


Background info:

- I'm a College student - (So I have plenty of photos from an infinite number of different situations/events I never plan on selling that probably don't "need" to be kept in RAW on my main hard drive (a 500GB Momentus XT))

- As with many photogs, I do photoshoots (paid), photoshoots (unpaid), time lapses, cinematography, and just fun shots of daily life.

- I have a 15" MacBook Pro with a 500GB Momentus XT HDD (installed) which is often connected to a 23" external display.

- I have multiple externals (of all different sizes) a 2TB I use for TimeMachine Backups and some storage, a 750GB I backup all my photos/media to, a 500GB I also backup all my photos/media to, an older 250GB 3.5" External I use for extra backup from time to time, and an older 160GB 2.5" external I use for extra space too.

- The majority of the files I frequently access are from within the past year.

- I have 60D, 5D, and 5D2 that I am continually trying to keep in separate subfolders within each main folder so I don't end up having 2 or 3 of the same file number when they catch each other.

- Additionally, how do I include photos shot with my iPhone?

- I use Lightroom to organize my photos.


I'll upload a screenshot or two of the somewhat organized mess that is my "Pictures" Folder.





Pleaseee help, this is getting ridiculous.



Sincerely,


A student who has less anxiety from school than he does from his filing system.

[ptrd]

1. for multiple cameras, change the subfolder / image name inside the camera. So like your 5d rename all images taken in camera as 5dIMG_xxxx and with each camera. This will help you differentiate each camera.

2. I honestly use zoombrowser (canon software) to import my photos into my pictures folder for the date and rename each file "date + file number". Since you have multiple cameras I don't think this will work.

3. I do use lightroom 3 but I"m still newb at using it and haven't quite figured it out. I still use DDP (canon software because I can edit quit and export quickly).

4. Having multiple harddrives helps but I have a dual exposed dock for SATA drives. You can raid them together and save photos to both drives simultaneously. HD's are cheap enough to keep buying new ones and I store them. Every year I tend to burn to dual layer dvd's just in case.

Hope that helps

[scottbuckel]

I really like the approach that

Peter Krogh

Peter Krogh

uses. In short all of his images renamed upon import with a unique name and filed under one simple system by date into what he refers to as buckets. He discusses in detail all aspects of the managing digital files and from his discussions one can readily modify his approach. His system does require one to do some keywording and uses the database in Lightroom to find your images and he emphasizes making archive and backing up of your images.

For me treating all of my images the same makes it easier.

HTH,

Scott

[Flores]

A few things to consider (from a straight up data processing standpoint)

1) A hierarchical filing system will scale better for you over the years. Date is the obvious way to physically lay out the storage:
Year---Month---Date
2) Tag your photos with as much detail information as you can. the metadata attached to the files will make things much easier for you a few years down the road, when you remember you took a GREAT picture of something, but don't remember exactly when.
With pretty much any software that can see the tags, it's simple to just search for your subject and have a bunch of them come up. It also makes it that much easier to create collections for publishing (all pictures of Miatas, for example) would pull up all your miata pictures, and now you can quickly create a calendar or something.
3) the year-month-day structure allows you to split up and back up your file storage across multiple drives and even multiple systems (think cloud storage).
4) create new lightroom catalogues on a regular basis. since lightroom builds a database with all the pictures you have imported into it, over time, it becomes quite large.