When I download photos from my Camera (any day I go out shooting) and from our phones- monthly (mine) 3 monthly (Les's) I put them in a holding folder labelled with the month.
I name the photos (see below). Then I do a cull of the obvious crap. At the end of the month I back them up.
We have two back-up drives one at home and one at Les's work which theoretically comes home at the start of each month to be backed up... that process is a little hit or miss.
On the drive they are in my photos folder under family, and then organised by decade and year. Within each year there's a folder for each month... numbered so they stay in chronological order.
I name the photos by date. It's a little time consuming but each day is done in bulk. So you have all that months photos sort them by date select all from the same day and right click on one and choose rename.
Then name in order of Year Month Day eg; 2022 05 17 The computer does the numbering of each photo. Once again this way of naming keeps the images in Chronological order.
For the photos that I am going to upload to my Flickr account I use tags. I only use them sometimes for our family photos. Generally for events where other family members or friends are involved eg Joe and Jane's Wedding, Mary's Graduation. By tagging the photos with location, event, and names etc that means down the track other people (eg my kids) will know the who what when where. It also means that if Jane's Mum really wants a copy of some photo I took but I don't recall the date of the wedding I can just do a search for it. I really do recommend tagging photos- I just don't do it for most family photos because I take such a lot of photos and between editing, printing, sharing, and scrapbooking I already spend such a lot of time with them.
To add tags or comments you select one or more photos and then depending on what version of windows you are running a box will appear either below or to the right with places you can add information. For me tags are usually single words or multiple for terms eg 'Western Australia'. The briefer they are the better. If you want to add an address or longer detail use the comments box.
This information is called the metadata and is stored in an exif file that travels with the photo. So if you give someone copies on a drive or such other people will get the tags and comments as well. If you share it on facebook the exif file is stripped partly to protect people from accidentally sharing information like location etc that they don't intend to.
Here are some photos I have added comments on... I have no idea why they aren't all tagged they should be as this was for my number project in 2019. It was important to me to remember where I had collected the number but didn't want it published in Flickr- Flickr doesn't publish the comments but they do add pretty much all of the rest of the Metadata.
Once you have tags and the Mother of the bride has asked of that photo with Jane (and not Joe!) this is where you search...
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