Q&A | How do you organize digital photos?

We are just gonna do one question today because last night when I was trying to do work on my computer, my power kept flickering off because of high winds.

I decided to just go for a walk and then try again.

But when I got back home and sat down to work, the power kept on blinking. I finally gave up and went to Starbucks to get my essential nursing school assignments done.

Don’t worry, that’s decaf! I would not be drinking caffeinated coffee at 7:30 pm.

I came home and thought, “Oh, I’ll write a blog post now” and then the power blinked again twice.

And so I decided to just go to bed!

Anyway, due to being short on time (and also because it’s a holiday today), how about we do just one question this morning?

How do you organize digital photos?
I have recently started a market garden and want to populate social media posts with actual pictures of past gardens and produce, but struggle finding what I want from my Google photo archive.
A marketing professional suggests using mostly stock photos, but I find that a bit misleading and not very interesting.
Any suggestions?

And please, don’t limit the response to just blog/business photos. Same problem with personal shots too!

Thank you,

Monica

When I used my SLR exclusively, I always uploaded my pictures into a new folder for every month. So, I have folders for, say, January 2015, February 2015, and so on.

That made it pretty easy to find photos because I could usually just remember what year or month it was and look up the photos that way. Or I could at least remember something like, “I know that was in the winter of 2013.” and narrow down the folders.

But now that I largely use my phone, my photos are automatically organized into months and years! So that is convenient.

Also, both Apple Photos and Google Photos have a search function. Oddly, I find the Apple one seems to work better than the Google Photos one, but basically, you can type in a word and then pictures that match the search term will appear.

So, if I want to find pictures of a cat, I can just type, “cat” in, and then all my cat pictures will show up.

(I have extensive cat picture files. Ha.)

Since I have been blogging for so long, I have an extensive library of images stored on my site too, and I used the search feature in WordPress to find photos I need. That works very similarly to the way the search works on Apple Photos, except WordPress’s seems to depend on me having done a good job of labeling the photo when I uploaded it. 

What comes up when I search “salad”

So it is not a perfect system because my blog’s oldest photos were uploaded before it was a “thing” to add alt text and a picture title. But I have enough labeled pictures to make it work. 

“oatmeal” results!

Regarding stock photos

I think stock photos have their place when you are trying to make something rather generic, like a powerpoint presentation for school.

But for many applications, I just think they make your end product rather impersonal and boring. I’m not entirely sure what a market garden is (you grow things to sell, I assume?), but it seems to me that people would rather see what is real and imperfect, vs. what is perfect and also not-real.

A stock photo would never have formica counters or dishes in the sink!

For example, the photo I used at the beginning of this post is not a very good photo. I snapped it under poor lighting at Starbucks. 

But I’d rather use that than a stock photo of a coffee cup or coffee shop because it is personal and real. And I think most people who read my blog would prefer it that way too!

Realness is better than polished perfection, and that is especially true for a tiny, personal business. If I was going to buy produce from a little market, I’d want to see the actual food they grow.

I’d be interested in the process, and in the people behind the garden. 

None of that can be accomplished with stock photos!

So, if I were you, I don’t think I’d want to use them. I’d use the search function on my phone when I need a photo, choose the best one, and figure that done-and-real is better than aiming for perfection. 

And as you go forward with this project, I’m sure you will have fresh, day-to-day photos to use!

Readers, how do you organize your digital photos?

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