How To Manage Your Photos - Photo Management Tutorial

The most requested topic that I get is to do a tutorial on 'how to manage your photos'. I finally caved and put together the most boring video I've ever created but you asked for it and here it is.

As a landscape photographer and filmmaker I amass a shocking amount of footage and raw FILES. It all has to be organized so that I can make a safety copy AND find what I need when I need it.

This simple, rudimentary method of handling your files won't win any awards but it works for me and I reckon it could work for you too.

Grab a coffee, get cozy and basque in the safe dullness of this lame video.

Thanks for watching
Gavin - Fototripper

#landscapephotography #filemanagement #photoediting

[uncleeric]

All my top-level folders begin with year-month-day and then place or purpose or subject etc. (e.g., "2024-09-25_Gavin-Portrait"). I may steal some ideas from this video to improve organization and search capabilities.

[shelleyedhouse]

My husband tells me i should delete all the crap photos, but if i did, I'd have nothing left! I'm definitely a hoarder too.

[cwUtube]

That unmade bed in the background is triggering my ex-army OCD 😮😊

[swissuriel]

When it comes to the transfer speed -one note from my side: the USB-C connector doesn't guarantee for any transfer speeds. There are USB-C cables that transfer at USB2 speeds, USB3 speeds, Thunderbolt 3 or 4 speeds... the list goes on and on.

[happymystic]

Always good to see how other people handle certain tasks … always something to take away from that. Keep going …😊

[IanBrowne-xn]

Thank you for the refresher coarse . I always feel the best filing tool is the delete button.

[subject]

For repetitive folder structures like this I make a generic one that I duplicate (cmd D) and rename the duplicates.

For example: folder named _location, duplicate it, rename it, inside is a day folder duplicate or rename accordingly, and waiting inside of that is your camera, drone and osmo, all ready to go.

The starting underscore keeps the folder at the top alphabetically.

[andrewroland]

I print out all my images, then photocopy the print to make back-ups before deleting the RAW files.

[mattheweaton]

I download the sd card to my MacBook, cull through the images and delete the crappers. I then remove the sd card and label it. That SD card the goes in my safe, never to be deleted.

[markstevens]

Right off the bat you have touched on just what I don’t want to do! Which is dump RAW IMAGES straight onto my MacBook…

[joao.s.cardoso]

Quick question Gavin. You mention that the left ports are slower than the right. I have a Macbook pro M1 (16 version) and the specs state that all 3 USB-C ports are USB 4.0 (40 Gbps). Are there any differences between these 3 ports?! cheers.

[joao.s.cardoso]

Cool tips Gavin. If I may add, I usually put the date first so I can organize by date and sometimes the sequence of days helps me organize it better. I can have all of 2024 photographs and select all folders easily. If I have location first it’s sorted alphabetically and I need to go through all folders one by one to copy for example. I also like to keep one Lightroom catalog per year and sometimes per trip if I have a lot of photographs and the catalog stays in the folder with the year or the trip. When o backup the files to the NAS or online the catalog gets backed up with it so I save a lot of time later. Also I have a 1TB online storage (onedrive offers you 1TB storage if you have office. In fact the Microsoft family office subscription give you 5 accounts with 1TB of space for each member and you get both Microsoft office and the online storage for 99 euros a year of something like that. were I keep my keepers. If anything goes wrong I have at least those on a virtual space where it’s much harder to loose anything.

[lowellprice]

Excellent video! I have organized my images the same way you do since I started shooting with a digital camera, except I haven't used bridge. I keep all of my images as well...lol...lost track of the number of hard drives I now have (I have to be over ten now)!

[oneeyedphotographer]

<Open terminal window>
cd /Volumes/SSD
mkdir -p "Margaret River 2024/day "{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} #/more names here as you wish


mkdir make directories
-p Make missing subdirectories
"..." needed to enclose spaces
{} Repeat for each listed item. You would get day 1, day 2 etc
# and following are comments..

[bd]

Thanks for the pointers. I do not put all my pictures onto the computer because I have read it can reduce the storage space, speed, and make the disk more prone to corruption if your constantly adding and deleting large amounts of data. It’s cheaper to replace an external hd than your MacBook is my logic.

[TheMadmacs]

i have never been able to make a file system, i have important letters slipped behind cup rack to remind me to read them everytime i make coffee, some of them have been there for a and thats the best organised bit of my filing system.

[wandering.camera.guy.]

I do my process on my iPad as I’m a hobbyist so shoot hundreds of photos a day and not thousands. All image files and directories start with year-month-day. I cull with any free time during the day as my iPad is always with me. Nice getting home from a trip with all culling and naming done. I either backup with camera card, external drive or both. Also, culling during the trip gives me great feedback on what I have good shots of and if my technique is working.

[philipgilligan_art]

Smashing, learned some shortcut button tricks there thanks

[petzo]

I name my folders always with year month day first followed by the location … 24 09 12 Location… so I have always a chronological order

[johnmiller]

If you leave your external hdd’s in a drawer, how do you find the right HDD that contains the photo you want? How do you label your hdd’s?