3 Things Photographers Can Do While Stuck at Home

When was the last time you put any thought into your file management system?

We ask because for many a reasons, there will be moments in your life as a photographer when taking photos just isn’t a priority. Maybe you’re social distancing during a pandemic, or maybe you just need to give your back/knees/wrists a break! But that doesn’t mean you have to shut down that part of your life altogether; especially when there are photos that need sorted and stored.

The temptation to drag and drop from card to computer is a powerful one that both hobbyist and professional photographers struggle with. But using that as your “file management system” will lead to a number of problems that can lead to permanently losing your photos.

You can avoid such future crises by taking time today to do three simple things:

1. Time travel through your portfolio

Start things off by scanning through what you’ve already accumulated. Chances are, you will be surprised at how many photos you overlooked when you first downloaded the sets.

2. Dust off or (finally) delete discarded photos

Once you have an idea of what you’re working with, you can start taking action! First, delete any and all images that are unusable. Then you can reedit anything that still stands out.

If you’re a photographer that is constantly improving on their RAW files, then consider deleting the metadata file (.XMP) that saves the previous edits. This will free up a lot of space on your hard-drives.

3. Figure out your file- and folder-naming system

The easiest way to forget what you have is to leave filenames as “IMG_###," and keeping them into folders titled after the date they were downloaded. At a glance, this tells you nothing about a photo’s subject or purpose.

Now the only wrong way to create your naming system is to not create one at all. Beyond that, it’s a matter of personal preference. But here’s an example of how you can organize your folders, with titles that quickly tell you the what, where, and who of your photos:

2020 Photography : 2020 Portraits : 051020_MHK Morrison Family

From there, it’s easy to create a corresponding filename – just add the IMG### to the end of the folder sequence (ex. 051020_MHK Morrison Family_IMG_123).

After an afternoon of taking our own advice, we deleted more than 17,000 files! That’s 442 gigabytes we freed up in our storage for future frames. Tell us your tips , or how ours helped you, on Facebook and Instagram.

Article by Erin Poppe