How To Label & Organize Your Photos

Digital photography is a blessing and curse. We don't have to worry about using up precious film or the expense of printing every photos, but that often leads to more photos than we'd ever need. I know. I'm an over-shooter :)

Labeling and organizing photos can seem so daunting, especially if you are just starting the process. Figuring out the best system for you might take some trial and error but it will be SO worth it, I can promise you!!!

People work in different ways. Some of us use online tools like Google Calendar or Trello, while others use planners and pen & paper to-do lists. There is no "right way" to label and organize your photos, the important thing is that it happens and you find a way that you will stick with. I'm going to give you some ideas to get you going and hopefully you'll find something that works for you here or will get an idea for something else.

Organizing

Start at a high level and then go lower. This is the "tower structure" of your digital organization system. It means you start with a folder of the year, within that folder you have the twelve months, and then within those folders you have events. Example: 2020 > February > Birthday Party 2-15 . Now I have all the photos from a birthday party in a dated folder.

Now what about random photos that don't correspond to an event? The photos you take of your kids or of that beautiful dessert you made? These are loose files within your month folder but they should still be labeled!!! Example: 2020 > February > Kids with a snowman. Whether you date them is up to you, but it can never hurt and you might be thankful you did it later on :)

There are other methods you could use, of course. You could have your year folder and have your events alongside your months, using the month folders simply for the loose photos. Example: 2020 > Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec, Birthday Party, 4th of July, Family Vacation, Christmas. The benefit of this is quicker, easier access to your event photos but the downside is that you have more folders at a higher level. If you chose a route like this, it is IMPERATIVE that you date your event folders!!! I'm sure there are even more ideas you could use, but whatever you do, make sure your system is clear and understandable so that you will keep going and will remember what to do. Also make sure your photos are dated in some way that you'll know when things happened.

Labeling

This is the harder one for me. It's so much easier to just leave them as IMG_1934 or what-have-you than to label them! But after three graduation parties, I find myself wishing I could search for photos by the people in them! If you are using an organization system where your folders take care of the dates and location, then simply label your photos by who is in them. No fuss, just write the names. (If it were a photo of my family, I would literally just write Dan Carrie Sarah Joe Mark. No punctuation or anything. Yeah, I'm a little bit lazy :) If it's a loose photo within a month, add the date and, if the location is important to the photo, add that too.

If you use Lightroom, and your photos are all of one thing, say, photos of one child, you can export them with a new file name like "sarah_birthday_photos_2020" and all the photos are labeled in one fell swoop. This is only helpful if all of the photos are of the same person/event. Labeling them with who is in the photo will save you so much time later on!

In the end, it really isn't complicated but I know it can be intimidating to think about and start. I hope these tips are helpful!

If you've found a good system, what did you create that works for you? When we share ideas, we help even more people get their photos organized and it's that much more likely they will print their memories!!