How do you store and label your photographs from each collection?

[AdrianW1963]

This is a bit of a query really.

Over the years I have taken many photographs and many cam recordings of animals and many other images, I was wondering how people label the images to store them.

Do you upload on to CD/DVD, do you upload on to an external hard drive, do both or do you just label the memory card up and store them.

If you upload your photograph’s do you put them in a file with the name of the location and date and year on the file, do you put each species into a file within the previous, or do you just leave the photographs and allow the hard drive to sort into alphabetical order?

Myself I upload to CD/DVD, once I have sorted them out into species files with the location name date and year on each photograph then add them to a file within the main file for the location ie (Cotswold Wildlife Park 31 05 2021 and then have the days photographs all sorted within this file), after this I then upload on to an external hard drive for safety.

I am now thinking should I buy another external hard drive as to sure I don’t loose any of my photographs and cam recording’s or do you think I have enough to be safe?

 

[littleRedPanda]

How Do You Store Your Photographs?

 

[gentle lemur]

I get rather paranoid about this
When I upload photos from the memory card, with Nikon Transfer 2, it automatically sends 2 sets of image to my desktop's hard disk and I immediately transfer one to my NAS drive: in each case they go into a folder labelled D500 2021 Immediate. This program is set up to label the folder and each image, so my latest zoo photos are in the folder Bristol20210519_027B (the zoo, the date, my 27th visit number to the zoo and B showing that I used my D500), the first image is Bristol027B001.NEF and so on. Then I can format the memory card again. If use 2 memory cards, I follow the same system but add a and b to the folder and image names.
After deleting the images that aren't worth keeping I move the folder on my hard disk in the main D500 2021 folder, copy it to the same folder on the NAS drive and delete the backup in the Immediate folder on that drive. So I always have 2 copies of each image. At the end of each year, I move that year's folder to a separate hard drive before starting the new year's folder on my hard disk.
However after 15 years of digital photography, I do have an awful lot of images and it is hard to find a particular photo, such as the one of 'Behan', the Indian rhino at Whipsnade, wallowing in her pool: I can remember the image clearly, but I can't remember the year, so I would have work through all my Whipsnade photos until I found it. Consequently I am gradually going through my photos making extra copies of the good ones (and deleting those superseded by better ones) and then organising these copies by species, so I now have folders for species of mammals, birds, reptiles etc organised systematically with extra folders for signage, zoo buildings etc. And of course I have those folders backed up on my NAS drive too - so I have 4 copies of each image. I haven't just been setting quizzes during lockdown, but I'm still working through 2017's photos.
I reckon I'm safe unless there's a fire. So just to be extra safe, I have a stored a hundred or so of my very best images in the cloud, in Nikon Image Space (which provides some free space for registered Nikon users).

 

[RetiredToTheZoo]

For me image storage starts when I take a photo. At end of each day I copy the day's images from the sd card to the 2nd hard drive on my editing computer. I use a folder structure roughly based on subject matter and/or location. For instance, if I was at xyz zoo today, the images would go into Pictures-Zoos-2021JUN28 XYZ Zoo. I then copy that folder to a 3rd hard drive in the editing computer, a copy each on 2 separate portable hard drives and another home networked computer. I have five copies of each image. That way I feel comfortable formatting the sd cards and re-using them. If I'm on a multi day outing, I take my laptop, copy the daily images to it, then to the portable hard drives, then copy from one of the portable hard drive to my desktop when I get home.

I use Lightroom Classic to sort, rate, add keywords, and edit. After editing, I will export the best images to a completely different folder and the other devices, including my phone. I will also burn them to a CD or DVD. I also do a full data backup a couple times a month. The very best images, I print. Quality printed images will last a long time. I'm considering printing a photo book or two just because my kids or grandkids will never understand my system or take the time to go through all my images when I no longer can do it.