How do you zoom into your saved photo like zooming into a subject? Photo by Jenna Hamra on Pexels.com
Saving your files is the easy part. Naming the folder that holds those photos will make sure that your image files and videos can be found easily.
Naming Convention
Most of the phones would have saved your photo and video files in a similar way like this “File Type”_”Date”_”Time” (e.g. IMG_20210713_140104 or VID_20210713_140104)
Because the manufacturers of cameras and smartphones have made it easy to find through date, usually I would not change the file name of each individual file but would name the folders in which the images and videos are saved so that you can find them easier.
For folders, I would usually customise the naming convention in the style of Personal Photos: YearMonthDay_ Personal_Event_Location_sub-Location.Photos
Professional Video: YearMonthDay_WilzWorkz_Event_ Location_sub-Location.Videos
When it comes to ‘Event’ we can categorise it as follows
Travel (for my trips) 220715_WilzWorkz_Travel-Vietnam
Events like AGM, DnD with company name 220715_WilzWorkz_AGM-SgAir
Portraits 220715_WilzWorkz_Portrait-Karen
Training
Landscape
Sports
Saving in Folders
The next step is to put all the photos and videos in their respective sub-folders just to make life easier:
220715_WilzWorkz_Travel_Vietnam is the main folder and inside the folder you can split the files into photos and videos (220715_WilzWorkz_TravelVietnam_Photos and 220715_WilzWorkz_Travel_Vietnam_videos)
An additional step I would always do is to select photos and videos and make a copy in a “Select” folder. This is the folder I use for further edit and save another edited version called “Select.Edited”. The photos in the “Select.Edited” photos are the one I put in portfolios and online backup locations.
Using this method, every time you download from the camera’s memory card, you already have all the information needed to find a particular photo without the need to do a Search. Even if you need to do a search using desktop such as “Everything” (https://www.voidtools.com/), just keying in the genre, year and event name in the search bar will make it faster without resorting to the use of Lightroom.
The articles in this series:
Data Storage Strategy https://wilzworkz.wordpress.com/2021/07/18/data-storage-strategy-part-1/
Naming files for faster search https://wilzworkz.wordpress.com/2021/07/19/organise-and-quickly-find-your-files/
Storage Strategy for Content Creators https://wilzworkz.wordpress.com/2021/07/21/storage-strategy-for-content-creators-part-3-network-attached-storage/