| I used to organize photos according to topic and sub-topics, but I found that too limiting. This is what I do now:
All my personal photography goes in one library. Special projects that include hundreds of shots get their own libraries, and those libraries are archived once the project is completed.
My personal library is organized by dated sub-folders in this fashion:
-- Year
---- Month
-------- Day
Every photo is tagged with descriptive keywords. The name of every person in a photo is a keyword. Special events (like a birthday) are keywords. Inanimate objects that are subject matter (like a statue) are keywords. Place names and time of day can be keywords if they are important elements of the image.
This way, I can rapidly find images by keyword or by combining keywords with dates. I have smart folders for frequently-accessed topics.
I believe that this system permits growth better than subject-based folder naming. |