Photo Chaos

I had a very specific filing system for my photos on my old computer and that system has done pretty well for me on this computer once I export them from iPhoto. Unfortunately, in the past year of owning this computer, I haven't organized iPhoto... at... all. So while all of my edited and exported photos are nicely organized, the place I spend the most time editing is a complete mess. I have the hardest time finding photos and it is just overwhelming to me when I try to go through old photos. As a result, I have decided that I will not start 2013 until my (over 5,000) photos from the past 2 years are organized, labeled and bad photos deleted. This means I will not import any photos off my camera until this is done and so posts will be a little sparse until I finish... which I hope to accomplish by the end of this weekend.

The funny (as in funny sad) thing is that it is really easy to organize in iPhoto and once I have everything set up it will be easy to stay organized. The real issue right now is the volume of photos I have to go through. Here is how I'm arranging things for now.

I only keep a couple of years worth of photos on my computer. All the rest are on a back up drive I can easily access if necessary. I initially created folders for the individual years I have on my computer (plus one specifically for our old house since that spanned further back).

Then I created a bunch of subfolders. I have a House folder and a Life folder and within that I break things down even more. Once I had all my folders set up, I went through each individual event and just dumped the photos in the appropriate folder (no delting or anything). Once all the photos in an event were in folders, I minimized that event (notice that I don't even bother to title them) as an indication that it was finished. Once all the photos are in the correct folders, I go through them and delete duplicates (since all the same type photo are in the same place it is a lot easier to spot duplicates) or bad ones and if necessary, split the photos into separate albums that I can then title for very fast reference. 

I've managed to dump all of my 2012 photos and about half of 2011. I'm already feeling better but I'm still a far ways away from actually reaching my goal and I know that if I get new shiny pictures to edit, this will never get done. So please bear with me while I push through and get this finished.