Last time, I went over how I name all the thousands of photos I take each year. Each photographer will come up with his or her own naming system. This week I am going to show you how to organize your image files on your computer systems.

In sticking with my boring, yet simple, system, I start with one folder on my computer system called PHOTOS. Inside PHOTOS, I have subfolders for each year I’ve been taking digital photographs named: STP_2005, STP_2006, STP_2007 and STP_2008. In each of these folders I have twelve more folders for each month of that folder’s year. For this year, they look like STP_200801 through STP_200812. If you recall, I rename each of my photos when I put them on my computer to something like STP_20080912_0192.jpg. This method works for me. Others might create a folder for each topic they photograph. However, don’t over do it or your computer will get filled with hundreds of folders.

I know you are asking yourself how do I find something as specific as a photo of Space Mountain or how to pull up just my Walt Disney trip photos from 2006. That is the subject I’ll cover soon. This was to get you thinking how to set up your files on your computer system.

Below is a photo from the Pop Century resort named STP_20061213_0006.jpg which resides in folder PHOTOS, subfolder STP_2006 and subfolder STP_200612 on my hard drive. Anyone ever have one of these phones? I had a touch tone one.

The giant Mickey Mouse Phone icon at the Pop Century Resort.
Nikon D70/18-70G, 1/320s, f/9, 200 ISO, EV +0.7, 18mm Focal length