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Library Organization Advice #1
Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
August 23, 2012 - 9:25pm

I have professional concert photographs I want to organize. I have multiple artists, and I have photographed some artists multiple times on different dates at different locations.

Assume this is part of a larger master image database that has other subjects in it. What combination of folders, projects and albums would you recommend? Would you have a top level project or folder? Would you have a project or folder or album per artist? Per individual show I photographed?

Let's discuss :-)

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
August 24, 2012 - 7:25am

Walter,

Personally I wouldn’t organize them any differently than I do anything else. To mean, I would import every project named in chronological order, like this:

2012-08-23 | Cool Band, Los Angeles, CA

Then I’d keyword the photos with the band and/or artist names, venues played, and any other relevant info.

Then I’d build a series of Smart Albums to isolate them. You could have Smart Albums for individual bands or people, based on time (“show all shots from 2012”), venues, cities… the options are endless.

That’s the beauty of having good metadata in your original photos. You don’t have to figure out how to sort them now; instead you can sort them in any way that suits your fancy later on!

Good luck. It’s quite fun once you’ve done this, being able to sort and find any group of photos instantly.

@PhotoJoseph
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Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
August 25, 2012 - 12:27am

Thanks Joseph. I am very diligent about metadata and keywords. Artist/band name, band member(s) in the image, venue, city, state, genré, instruments being played, anything unique to the image.

Right now I have a top level folder called Music. Inside there I have a project for each artist or band I have photographed (all instances of the band within one project). Inside the project, I have albums for the different appearances I have photographed.

Example:

Music (Folder)
– Goo Goo Dolls (Project)
—- Lyric Opera House (Album)
—- Nissan Pavilion (Album)

– The Fray
—- DAR Constitution Hall

– Crushing Day
—- Cancun Cantina
—- Nottinghams
—- Rams Head

Just wondering whether there is a smarter way to organize them in the Library or if this makes sense enough. I can always make smart albums for venues, years, individual band members, etc. I have all of that metadata tagged in the images.

All of the images are registered with the US Copyright Office too. I tag every image with the copyright registration number in the keywords so I know which images are protected by which copyright registration number.

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
August 25, 2012 - 9:04am

Walter,

Again, my preference is to do it all by date, and then use Smart Albums for everything else. In your example above, what happens if you go to Coachella and shoot multiple bands? Do you still separate each band as above?

Granted for the music this is probably not a problem. But I don’t like the idea of sorting one type of photography (music) differently than another. Then you have different schemes you have to be sure to be diligent about.

That’s my 2¢

@PhotoJoseph
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