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Author Topic: Where do my "random" shots fit in?  (Read 5869 times)

Kaitlyn

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« on: November 03, 2009, 01:00:40 pm »

So my folders structure looks like:
YYYY
....YYMMDD.Event_Name1
....YYMMDD.Event_Name2


This works well whether I go somewhere or just take > 10 related photos or something... My problem is, what about the times where I snap a picture of a tree or a few of my dog, or other random shots? How can I fit them into my organizational structure? Any ideas?
« Last Edit: November 03, 2009, 01:12:06 pm by Kaitlyn »
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DarkPenguin

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2009, 02:14:27 pm »

....YYMMDD.Misc1?
....YYMMDD.Tree2?
....YYMMDD.3?
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Roger Calixto

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2009, 03:32:19 pm »

I have a similar structure for all my pictures EXCEPT on folder named "Around Home" under it I have a folder called home, hannover, anastift (a park here close by) and so on.

Maybe that helps?

{}
KT

edit:
I also have a folder named "Flowers" since for them it doesn't matter so much the location of the picture.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2009, 03:34:00 pm by kingtutt »
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Kaitlyn

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #3 on: November 03, 2009, 04:51:36 pm »

Hmm... never really thought about "multiple random folders", hehe....

For me, maybe it makes sense to have something like:
YYYY
....Animals (almost exclusively pics of my dogs throughout the year)
....Scenery
....Miscellaneous

Hmmm.... allows multiple groups of random shots throughout the year, and this way I can still provide some meaningful structure (so my precious dogs won't get lost in pictures of random stuff! hehe)
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picman

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« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2009, 05:00:49 pm »

I've got one called "To be filed"
It's a mess, but the stuff ends up somewhere.
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rosemanbridge

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2009, 08:01:35 pm »

Keep them all in the same folder with the name and camera  generated filename (eg 091104_12345) and use keywording to separate them.

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Wayne Fox

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #6 on: November 04, 2009, 12:38:46 am »

I'd make a folder called YYMM_Misc or YY_Misc depending on how many I have.  One for each month or year.  This way they are still grouped somewhat chronologically within the OS.
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john beardsworth

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #7 on: November 04, 2009, 07:07:25 am »

Quote from: Kaitlyn
For me, maybe it makes sense to have something like:
YYYY
....Animals (almost exclusively pics of my dogs throughout the year)
....Scenery
....Miscellaneous
You're making work for yourself. Stick them in that day's YYMMDD.Event_Name1 folder and add keywords to the random shots. If you ever want to find them later in the year, find them via the keywords. Think of folders as for physical storage issues only (eg backup, ease of rebuilding after a crash), describe the pictures with keywords, and use collections to produce groups with common themes or purposes.

John
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ceyman

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #8 on: November 04, 2009, 09:17:09 am »

Quote from: johnbeardy
You're making work for yourself.

This is exactly how I organize my images.  Folders have become irrelevant. I have LR import all images into subfolders organized by date: e.g. 2009/10/31.  Filenames are the date followed by the image #: e.g. 20091031-P3010433.RW2.  During the import I globally assign the keyword for the event: e.g. Smith_wedding.  Then I bring up the grid view & use the painter tool to assign additional keywords to individual or subsets of the entire import.  If Fido is in one of the Smith wedding shots you can find all the Fido pictures at once by filtering by the keyword, Fido

Keywording is one of the (many) really cool things about LR.
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Jon Meddings

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #9 on: November 04, 2009, 10:48:12 am »

Quote from: ceyman
This is exactly how I organize my images.  Folders have become irrelevant. I have LR import all images into subfolders organized by date: e.g. 2009/10/31.  Filenames are the date followed by the image #: e.g. 20091031-P3010433.RW2.  During the import I globally assign the keyword for the event: e.g. Smith_wedding.  Then I bring up the grid view & use the painter tool to assign additional keywords to individual or subsets of the entire import.  If Fido is in one of the Smith wedding shots you can find all the Fido pictures at once by filtering by the keyword, Fido

Keywording is one of the (many) really cool things about LR.

I do exactly the same here and the last 2 posters have stolen the words from my mouth! Kaitlyn I do think that you are making extra work for yourself. I don't think I could ever create a folder structure for my images that has enough reference information in it for me to truly find the picture I took in the mountains at an event that also happened to have a particular person/dog/pet in it. This is what keywording and collections are for - I use folders as a simple chronological means to group images in folders that are 'reasonably sized'.

So I do exactly as above - I use Downloader Pro to take all images on my card and dump them in a RAWImages directory\YYYY\MM\DD format. Filenames are the camera that took the image_Date_image#.cr2

Upon import I assign the keywords describing the shoot to all images and then at my leisure add the other keywords. Works well for me.

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Wally

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #10 on: November 04, 2009, 12:25:58 pm »

Quote from: ceyman
This is exactly how I organize my images.  Folders have become irrelevant.

The problem with this approach is that you are forever locking yourself into using Lightroom. What happens when something else comes along and is better? Or some other issue pops up that caused lightroom to crash?

I love and use Lightroom however I also spend a few moments (and that is all it really takes) to create a logical folder/file structure in the event I ever want to ditch Lightroom for something else. It also makes it much easier to do backups.

I create a folder for the year. Then I create a new one for each month that goes inside of that. Then I create a new folder inside of each months for the shoot that I try to name as something I can easily figure out later.

So we have
2009----Oct-----Fall Colors Blackwater Falls.

or

2009----Oct----Kids

It takes all of 3 seconds to do that and the right click "Sync Folder" option makes this very easy in Lightroom. I also usually have a misc folder in each month where I can drop files into that don't fit neatly into another one, and have dedicated folders for things like Cell Phone Pics, Facebook Pics, Flickr Pics, etc.
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john beardsworth

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #11 on: November 04, 2009, 02:49:31 pm »

Quote from: Wally
The problem with this approach is that you are forever locking yourself into using Lightroom. What happens when something else comes along and is better?
No, you're making your metadata portable. Save the keywords back to the files and it goes with you to the next app (using DNG makes that even easier as there's no dependence on the other app reading from sidecars). Dependence is on metadata, much more flexible than trying to categorise your pictures through folders.
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Wally

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« Reply #12 on: November 05, 2009, 09:50:48 am »

Quote from: johnbeardy
No, you're making your metadata portable. Save the keywords back to the files and it goes with you to the next app (using DNG makes that even easier as there's no dependence on the other app reading from sidecars). Dependence is on metadata, much more flexible than trying to categorise your pictures through folders.

Why not do both? What if metadata is not portable? What if DNG never gets adopted by any of the major players such as Canon or Nikon and Adobe drops it in 5 years. So far the only players that really seem to care about DNG are Adobe and the smaller camera makers. The major players do not seem to like it at all.

What if someone like Apple or Microsoft desides that they don't want to play nice with Adobe anymore and creates some new file standard and gets Nikon and Canon to sign up. Or Canon or Nikon decide to work together to create a new standard and shut out Adobe and they get Apple and/or Microsoft to make it a native file for the OS?

What if some new company desides that with the advent of video in DSLRs and cameras like RED that they can create a new system of portable RAW for both video and stills and as such the current DNG and metadata formats do not work well. Then what if someone like Apple took this and turned Final Cut and Aperture into a single product and much like the did with iTunes made a Windows version leaving Adobe and DNG in the dust.

What if the Open Source Community decided that they do not really like the influence of Adobe with DNG and create something different where things like camera profiles and lens corrections could be added by the camera into the raw data file and then be open for any program to read that used this open source format.

What if Sony who makes DSLRs and Sensors for other companies, as well as a bunch of software desides to create a new standard not based on what Adobe currently does and gets Nikon to be on board because they make the sensors for Nikon, and then this becomes the industry standard and Adobe drops the current metadata strategy for Lightroom and drops DNG

There are way to many what ifs in digital photography in 2009/2010 to lock yourself into any one system, program, or way of doing things and having an exit strategy is never a bad thing, especially when it only takes a few seconds to put one together. The only I know with any certainty is that 5-10 years from now I will be working with digital camera files differently than I do now. It may very well be Lightroom 5 and DNG or it might be something totally different.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2009, 09:55:36 am by Wally »
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #13 on: November 05, 2009, 10:16:22 am »

Lots of what ifs and irrelevant speculation. When Nikon and Canon agree etc.... OK, you don't get DNG - fine, that's another discussion and usually a dialogue of the deaf. My point was that use of DNG makes keywords-based organisation even more viable as an exit strategy and further undermines your lock-in argument.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2009, 10:17:25 am by johnbeardy »
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Wally

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« Reply #14 on: November 05, 2009, 12:13:57 pm »

Quote from: johnbeardy
Lots of what ifs and irrelevant speculation. When Nikon and Canon agree etc.... OK, you don't get DNG - fine, that's another discussion and usually a dialogue of the deaf. My point was that use of DNG makes keywords-based organisation even more viable as an exit strategy and further undermines your lock-in argument.

I get DNG, I use DNG and understand all of the pros and calls of it. All I am saying is why go all in on a bet that DNG and Lightroom are going to be the standard for digital imaging 5-10 years into the future.

Having DNG as an exit strategy is really not an exit strategy at all. Why put all of your eggs in the DNG basket when it is so easy and takes so little time to have a simple folder/file system that makes sense for you. It baffles me that people will spend lots of time and see lots of value in creating keywords and having an entire system built around them, yet do not see the value in spending 5 seconds when they download images of a CF card to create a new folder to compliment their keywording system.

10 years from now when I want to work on a photo that I shot in Oct 2009 of the fall colors in WV, if I am not using Lightroom it will be much easier to find it in a folder called Oct 2009 WV than it will to find it in some massive folder with tens of thousands of images on it. Having a folder system in place will also make it much easier in the future as more and more long term data storage moves to the "cloud" and off of local machines even if 10 years from now all of us are still using Lightroom and DNG.

The other advantage of having a folder system in place is in making backups. The reality is that not every image we shoot is as important as other images. Snap shots I take with my cell phone are not nearly as important to me as pictures from a big trip, or pictures of my kids that I will cherish for years to come. If I were still a working pro photographer shots from certain jobs would be much more important to me than other jobs. Having a good folder system in place makes for very easy backups to multiple drives.
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #15 on: November 05, 2009, 02:19:41 pm »

Anyone say tens of thousands of images in a single folder? No? DNG not an exit strategy? Really? Hit that iceberg today - what are you betting your metadata on, embedded inside a DNG or dragged along in the raw file's sidecar? Lock into LR? Did anyone ever say put all your eggs in one basket? No? More than a few straw men there....

Building your folder system for anything other than safeguarding your images is pointless and shortsighted. It's 2019 - get me your best WV fall pictures, not just 2009, and let's ratchet it up by saying ones with covered bridges too. You get them through your folder system. Hurry up. Sure those pics you think you remember are in the WV folder? Hope they weren't on the state line! Maybe you were standing in VA, so they'll be there, though only WV was in the frame. So are they in the Seasons folder then? Or in the Covered Bridges folder with ones from NH etc? Bit inflexible, that folder system, isn't it? Hard to be consistent over time, too? Such a shame it wasn't until 2012 that you realised those few shots of covered bridges would grow and become a project worth its own folders! And how much time did you then spend finding and moving the pre 2012 ones into the new folder? You carry on looking though - I'll just use my keywords and don't worry, I'll wait. Hey, now show me your best bridges, any states. I'm patient. Sure, I will depend on some keyword-aware program but am not locked into anything (maybe the OS will do the search), but for anything beyond the most limited search criteria a keyword-driven system is always going to leave a folder-based one in the dust. As true in 10 years as it is now.
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Wally

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« Reply #16 on: November 05, 2009, 04:12:00 pm »

Quote from: johnbeardy
Anyone say tens of thousands of images in a single folder? No? DNG not an exit strategy? Really? Hit that iceberg today - what are you betting your metadata on, embedded inside a DNG or dragged along in the raw file's sidecar? Lock into LR? Did anyone ever say put all your eggs in one basket? No? More than a few straw men there....

Building your folder system for anything other than safeguarding your images is pointless and shortsighted. It's 2019 - get me your best WV fall pictures, not just 2009, and let's ratchet it up by saying ones with covered bridges too. You get them through your folder system. Hurry up. Sure those pics you think you remember are in the WV folder? Hope they weren't on the state line! Maybe you were standing in VA, so they'll be there, though only WV was in the frame. So are they in the Seasons folder then? Or in the Covered Bridges folder with ones from NH etc? Bit inflexible, that folder system, isn't it? Hard to be consistent over time, too? Such a shame it wasn't until 2012 that you realised those few shots of covered bridges would grow and become a project worth its own folders! And how much time did you then spend finding and moving the pre 2012 ones into the new folder? You carry on looking though - I'll just use my keywords and don't worry, I'll wait. Hey, now show me your best bridges, any states. I'm patient. Sure, I will depend on some keyword-aware program but am not locked into anything (maybe the OS will do the search), but for anything beyond the most limited search criteria a keyword-driven system is always going to leave a folder-based one in the dust. As true in 10 years as it is now.

I think you are missing the point. I am not saying not to have keywords, metadata, or not to use Lightroom. All I am saying is if organization is important to you or anyone else why would you not also want to spend the 5 seconds it takes to have a logical folder/file system in place as a back up worse case strategy? Lightroom even supports this idea by having a folder view. It really gives you the best of both worlds.

If you don't have all of your images in one folder why don't you? If you think that folders are not important? And if you have multiple folders what do you name them?

So to take your example above. It is 2019 I hope I can still use Lightroom and my keywords and everything works fine but what if in 2015 something new comes out that I like better than Lightroom because it does things like softproofing and handles my video and does not use the same keywording Metadata system that Adobe uses with Lightroom and DNG. Should I not use the new program just to keep using lightroom? Should I spend days, weeks, and months importing my old files? Or will I be glad I spent 5 seconds today and have a logical file system.

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john beardsworth

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« Reply #17 on: November 05, 2009, 07:00:55 pm »

Sorry, but I simply can't be bothered continuing what should have seemed from the outset to be a pointless discussion.
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PeterAit

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« Reply #18 on: November 05, 2009, 07:24:40 pm »

Quote from: Kaitlyn
So my folders structure looks like:
YYYY
....YYMMDD.Event_Name1
....YYMMDD.Event_Name2


This works well whether I go somewhere or just take > 10 related photos or something... My problem is, what about the times where I snap a picture of a tree or a few of my dog, or other random shots? How can I fit them into my organizational structure? Any ideas?

Just like every house needs a "junk drawer," every photographer needs a "miscellany folder." Then you can assign keywords to help you find them.

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Brad Proctor

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Where do my "random" shots fit in?
« Reply #19 on: November 16, 2009, 09:09:19 pm »

Personally, I organize my files by date: /2009/November/16/12345.dng
The filename I use is the (always growing) number off the camera.  I tell Lightroom to use a prefix for different camera and when the camera rolls over 9999 I tell Lightroom to add a 1 (or 2, 3, etc).  Any organization beyond that is done in Lightroom with keywords, kinda...  I'm a little lazy...  

What we need is Lightroom to look at our files, figure out what they are and where they were taken, and keyword them for us!  

P.S. If the event arises that DNG suddenly disappears and a new standard pops up.  I volunteer to write a program to convert DNG files to the new standard. (and then add it to the collection of 50 other DNG->whatever converters that will exist at the time.)
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