So many photos in the hard disk! Do you tagged them?

[limwhow]

All of us invariably end up with years of photos in our hard disk.
How often have you remembered a picture but scratched your head because you can't remember where and when it was taken.

Personally I only started tagging my recent photos with keywords like:

• place
• subject names
• activities/events

... so that I may be able to search for them more efficiently in the future.
So what about all of you?
I would just like to find out if you all do tag, or actually don't bother with doing that at all.

 

[flipfreak]

important or work photos get labelled accordingly. leisure stuff not as much since i shoot really slowly during leisure shooting.

 

[night86mare]

i go by place, and then date.

i don't keep many leisure photos.

 

[9V-Orion Images]

Only by time in compliance with ISO 8601 and geographic coordinates.

 

[papajanggo33]

i go by place, and then date.

i tagged those 2 alike or general title. they are all important to me.

 

[eedwinn]

No I don't. I just name the folders accordingly.

 

[wdEvA]

same as eedwinn, i name the folders by date - name - location, and rename the pics accordingly while processing.

 

[diver-hloc]

233GB worth of Photos (some is Video)

All in 455 difference folder... No tagging.

 

[baijialong]

60GB, >15000 files some video and 60%~80% is last year one

 

[baijialong]

tried tagging but got fedup.

 

[wildcat]

Mine are always folder dated. Later, in addition to date I also put in a description to the folder (if got specific event).

 

[limwhow]

i go by place, and then date.

i don't keep many leisure photos.

I can understand your method of tagging, night86mare.
As your works are mostly landscape/citiscape/places, your way of tagging is most appropriate for you.

Only by time in compliance with ISO 8601 and geographic coordinates.

Wow, this is high level, 9V-Orion Images!
Geo-cordinates must be really difficult to search for: e.g. if I want to find my Taiwan Taipei photos 2 years ago I got to enter xx" xx' xx what ah what ah like that?
Siong, man!

 

[limwhow]

i tagged those 2 alike or general title. they are all important to me.

How do you do that? I don't think I understand exactly.
Can you share with me?

 

[limwhow]

No I don't. I just name the folders accordingly.

same as eedwinn, i name the folders by date - name - location, and rename the pics accordingly while processing.

Mine are always folder dated. Later, in addition to date I also put in a description to the folder (if got specific event).

Yupe. In fact, three of you all have fairly similar principle of folder and date categorisation.
This certainly goes a long way in ensuring some order in your collection.

Maybe let me share with you an example: If I want to look for ALL photos taken at 'Great Wall of China' (in Beijing), or ALL photos taken in 'Xiamen', or ALL photos in 'Bangkok' that contain pictures of my 'Child number 1' and my 'Child number 3' with their 'Grandmother'...
That would be quite a set of parameters that have to be satisfied.
Of course, Adobe can easily search the whole collection and come up with the final search.
How many of you actually find yourselves doing that (once in a while, regularly, all the time)?

 

[wdEvA]

Yupe. In fact, three of you all have fairly similar principle of folder and date categorisation.
This certainly goes a long way in ensuring some order in your collection.

Maybe let me share with you an example: If I want to look for ALL photos taken at 'Great Wall of China' (in Beijing), or ALL photos taken in 'Xiamen', or ALL photos in 'Bangkok' that contain pictures of my 'Child number 1' and my 'Child number 3' with their 'Grandmother'...
That would be quite a set of parameters that have to be satisfied.
Of course, Adobe can easily search the whole collection and come up with the final search.
How many of you actually find yourselves doing that (once in a while, regularly, all the time)?

hmm, haven done that yet.
but before the date folders, they are divided into categories, eg portraits, landscape.. etc
works well for me, but it's personally preference,
if u find yourself doing the search often, maybe u can get lightroom tagging for better organization. am using lightroom, but do not utilize the tagging.

 

[limwhow]

233GB worth of Photos (some is Video)

All in 455 difference folder... No tagging.

Yeah... diver-hloc.
That is the interesting thing, isn't it?
How many of us actually take the trouble to even do simple keyword tagging of the photos so that in the future we can search for them easily.

Maybe I am crazy.
But I have been thinking hard - just say 10-20 years down the road, if I want to compile a photobook for my grandchildren, and I need to look for some pictures in my perhaps, 100Tbyte (hypthetical only) worth of collection... Wah, quite siong, won't it be?

 

[papajanggo33]

How do you do that? I don't think I understand exactly.
Can you share with me?

what i usually do is by making a subfolder based on the date 1st, followed by the places.
i also copied the same images and make different subfolders if i were using different lenses for my own research. say pics taken in the park @ pasir ris last mth, i make another copy under "sigma 28-300 af aspherical" or "sigma 28-70 MF f/2.8".

if you were to lump all together under a general folder, it may take time to quick search for a certain photos when you have lots of them. mine is over 300GB of shots combined from olympus,panasonic,d90 and scanned pics of early 80s.

hope it helps

 

[limwhow]

hmm, haven done that yet.
but before the date folders, they are divided into categories, eg portraits, landscape.. etc
works well for me, but it's personally preference,
if u find yourself doing the search often, maybe u can get lightroom tagging for better organization. am using lightroom, but do not utilize the tagging.

I use Adobe Bridge.
It serves me well.

For me, I organise my folders this way:

• Year - e.g. 2009, 2010
• Months - e.g. Jan 09 to Dec 09
• followed by folders depicting the events within that month - e.g. 'Chinese New Year Buying Flowers', 'Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner'.
• then when I open up the folder, I will select all the photos and keyword tag them with these words - 'Chinese New Year 2010', 'Reunion Dinner', 'Buy flowers'... and names of the individuals that appear in that photo.

If I go travelling, I would organise like this:

• Year
• Months
• folder within the Month subdirectory, e.g. 'Beijing xxth - xxth Dec 2007', and under this folder, the subfolders like 'Tiananmen Square xxth Dec 07', 'Forbidden City xxth Dec 07', 'The Great Wall xxth Dec 07', 'Wangfujing xxth Dec 07'... etc. etc..
• I will then select all the photos within that folder and tag all with the keywords: 'China', 'Beijing', followed by selecting the photos with the individual locations and tagging 'Great Wall' etc. etc..
• Then I will look for people: I will tag the names of my family members, and others like 'monks' if there are pictures of them, 'children' if there are local children portraits, 'Beijing duck' if we were at the famous restaurant....

It is, like what some members have said... too tedious and after a while one may get fed up.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would therefore like to hear your experience and opinion.

 

[9V-Orion Images]

Wow, this is high level, 9V-Orion Images!

Geo-cordinates must be really difficult to search for: e.g. if I want to find my Taiwan Taipei photos 2 years ago I got to enter xx" xx' xx what ah what ah like that?
Siong, man!

Err, not exactly. The precise location can be georeferenced automatically by its coordinates and be displayed on a 3D virtual globe user interface with many applications and programs.

I'm sure many photographers geotagged their photos with GPS data logger too.

 

[antacid]

i started off with folders, but if you have photos at the same place or same people but different times, or same time different place etc, it becomes quite complex.

used the tagging feature in LR which is pretty simple to use. makes metadata searches quick and easy. just tag them on import and with one click, i can find all the pictures of weddings i've been to, or all the photos of manta rays or whalesharks. it does take a little effort, so i only do the tagging after i'm done processing. no point tagging each photo only to delete 90% of them after processing!