Organizing Digital Photos From Multiple Sources

I had a solid photo organizing, editing and uploading system going until last summer when I got my smartphone, and then everything dissolved into chaos. My system only worked when I had photos coming from one source, and the addition of a new stream really threw a wrench into things. Also, the transition from constant traveling to regular life also changes things a bit. I no longer need to constantly be dealing with photos, but that does bring up the question of when to deal with the random photos from life.

As the months have passed, I've finally gotten into a system. One key point was to realize that I don't need to be editing and dealing with photos all the time. Once a month is good enough. So when the month rolls over, that's when I go through all the photos from the previous month. Knowing the time frame of the photos I'm dealing with has really helped to know when to move photos from one place to another, when to delete photos, etc.

To start, I make a new folder in my photos folder for the month. I also put the location because I don't actually keep track of my life by dates, but by location.

Here's a look inside the folder. This is actually from March, because we didn't take any photos with our camera this month. Our camera organizes the photos in folders by days, which I leave alone. I also make a folder called "phone" and "insta". I drag my photos from these locations here.

I should note here, that at some point I set up an automatic sync from my phone to my computer, so my photos from my phone are always on my computer. But at this point I copy them from the sync folder to the proper month folder. (I use the app Dropsync, which works through Dropbox.)

At this point, it's time to do some tagging and editing. I've been using Lightroom for a little while now, and if you spend time editing photos, this is really the program to use. I regret that I spent so much time editing in Photoshop. I'm just going to wave my hands over this part like it's magic. I'm really, really far from knowing anything about Lightroom and I mostly just hack my way through things, so I think if I said anything about my methods in Lightroom I'd just give you bad habits.

One really cool thing about Lightroom is that you can upload directly from it to various online locations. My main online photo place is Flickr, which I've used for many years. I like knowing that I have a back-up back-up online through Flickr. Also, if I ever need to search for a photo, I do it there. I rarely go through my photo folders to find a photo, instead I'll just download it from Flickr.

My organiztion within Flickr is pretty similar to my computer desktop. I have one collection of "By Year" and one for "By Location". So when I upload a new album to Flickr (2014.04 - OR), I'll put it in two places "By Year" and "By Location". This helps me when I'm browsing for photos later on.

After editing photos in Lightroom, I'll export them to my layout making folder. This way I can delete them as I use them, so I know what layouts I have left to do.

That's pretty much it! Doesn't seem so complicated now that I've typed it up, but it did take a while before I figured it out. Do you have any special photo organizing/editing tips?

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