The Best Way To Catalog Your Pics

I have mine all catalogued in file boxes by airplane type-all still on print film (one of the few holdouts from the film era, I am)…stuff I shot on slide film I have stowed in notebooks by airshow/year….it seems to work fairly well. The planes are all alphabetized for ease of finding, but I am running out of space in the cabinets and will need to expand soon to a few more drawers.

M

In My Pictures folder I have a folder for each spotting trip. It starts off with the airport ie ‘STN’ or ‘LHR’ followed by the date which is just 6 numbers ie ‘061105’ would be today. I copy all the originals to this folder to begin with, and they always stay there. Always keep originals, if a magazine or someone wants a photo they’ll usually ask for a specific edit, which you’ll only be able to do for them if you’ve got the originals.

I then start to edit the worthy ones. Once edited, they’ll be saved as the reg ie ‘EI-DAN’ folowed by a ‘no2’ if it’s edited for forum posting, ‘no3’ if it’s in 1200 pixel wide format, or ‘no4’ if it’s been edited to specific requirement. The reg on it’s own is just a shot edited in the standard 1024 pixel foramt. This way, just by a quick glance at the filenames I know what size it’s at, whether it’s compressed or not, and where it’s meant to be uploaded to.

I have them named like this:

G-EZJW 5 Nov 2005 EGNT (1).

Then I have folders for each a/c type.

Chris

I have mine filed under the ABC method which works quite well for me.

A = All Right.

B = Blurry.

C = Crap.

There is a D category which is where most of mine end up, it stands for Discard. (Even worse than crap.)

Regards,

kev35

I believe there is no right or wrong way it is just how you choose to organise them. As long as you are happy with it and can find the photos you whant it works for you.

i have mine organised by locsation, display date and then aeroplane so for example:
imperial war museam duxford – flying legends 2005 – B-17

Wow – its even better than I imagined.

It catalogued all my pictures on every drive (even my NetWare mapped ones), and within minutes I was watching a “timeline” slideshow.

Couple up your Shuttleworth pictures with the “Dick Tracy” soundtrack playing in the background – a very pleasant way to relax.

I saw someone using that yesterday, thought it was commercial software – looked good. I’ll find the link and post it. (Picasa, I mean.)

Here we are:

http://picasa.google.co.uk/

If you are talking digital files you could try Picasa, the free download from Google.

This has a ‘label’ facility.

You can attach to any picture, wherever it happens to be stored on your hard drive, as many labels as you like.

Thus one pic can be labelled

Duxford
Legends 2005
Hurricane
Ground shot
R4118.

At the top of the thumbnail display, which Picasa produces for you, are all these labelled categories. This doesn’t involve moving or copying the original file in any way.

If you do move it Picasa automatically updates it.

It would work for me if I could be bothered to label my pictures. 🙁

Moggy

I download my pics from each event into a new folder e.g “Legends 2005” which I back-up to CD/DVD as a “Master”. I edit the pics putting the better ones into a sub-folder. Those in that sub-folder I then:-

1.Copy to another CD and (usually) have them printed (can’t beat Boots at 7p each at the moment);
2. Catalogue those photos into an Access database showing aircraft type and model/mark;location;year;registration and nationality.

It is time consuming and I’d welcome a streamlined way of achieving this, but in the meantime it works for me. I’d somehow like to be able to copy my edited file direct into the database – but how would it know the type etc!!

CM

I assign them all a unique number going like this:

yyyymmdd-001-01.

The date is obvious, 001 refers to a unique registration for that date, and 01 refers to the photos. I’ve added it so that if I shoot several photos of the same plane I won’t have several numbers for that plane.

All this information goes into a MS Access spreadsheet along with details such as the airline, airport, type, date, registration etc.

In a filing cabinet.