One of the challenges I undertook for the Genea Blogger Games was to organize my digital photographs. I had to do a minimum of 20.
My photographs are already fairly well organized. They are all labeled with names of who is in them and a date if known.
My current family photographs are kept in folders by year and then by date and occasion.
I have a folder labeled “Old Photos”. Within that folder is “Mom’s Side” and “Dad’s Side”. Then within each of those is a break down of each family. My Dad’s side is easiest because there are only 4 surnames to worry about: Lassalle, Segalas, Mazeres, and Breilh. If there are alot of photographs, the folders are divided by each couple.
My Mom’s side is more complication because the Portuguese side is humongous. This folder is broken down into each Pacheco couple: Antonio & Alexandrinha, Manoel & Jacinta, Joao & Joana, Jose & Francisca/Maria, Francisco & Alexandria, Marie & Joaquim, and Theodoro & Maria. That’s the paternal line. Then their is a folder for Jones/Jackson, the maternal side. Within each of those, I broke down each family group into folders.
I had two folders to empty labeled “found photos”. Two years ago, we found an old satchel of photographs that I hadn’t seen since my Grandmother was moved into a rest home in the mid 1970s. I had scanned all the photographs and put them in this folder so I could email them easily. It was time to sort them into their appropriate family group. First, I made sure that each photograph was properly labeled. Then I sorted them to the appropriate family group folder. Once that was done, I went through every folder to resort all the stray photographs into their appropriate couple folder.
After that task was complete, I went through my email looking for attached files. When I found them, I checked to see if the attachment was a photograph and if I had saved it previously. Those photographs were added to my folders.
This task took some time. At least now I know that all my digital photographs are in their appropriate places. I have no reason not to find them now.
What’s your method for keeping your digital photographs organized and easy to find?
