OK, I have to admit, back in 2003 when I got my first digital I did actually delete a few photos, but I did regret it because I am now missing some numbers in the sequence. I quickly over it with the decision to not do this again.

As far as losing everything because of a disaster (fire, flood, hard drive failure, etc) I think I could also get over it too… with time… and with alcohol ;) I just don't want to be the cause of losing a file. Otherwise, I am with you.

I have seen many posts about numbering/naming/organizing photos, and the advice is often to cull the duds and work with the rest. Perhaps I have a bit of OCD but I can't do that!!!

A recent post raised the issue of giving a customer a batch of serialized photos where certain numbers are missing, and the consternation that might create with the customer. In a business situation I can see renumbering the photos delivered to a customer to be sequential. But from my perspective as owner/creator of the photos I consider myself to be my prime customer, and I am bothered by missing numbers.

I started photography in the days of film and I always received every negative and slide back from the photo processing shop. I may not have reprinted every photo or shown every slide in a presentation, but I sure did not chop up a negative strip to cull a bad exposure or composition from the middle of a strip of 6 negatives. I also did not throw away bad slides, but kept them in an archive.

Now with digital I file all my photos by their camera-assigned serial numbers in folders that group batches of photos logically by topic and rough date. So I have folders like:

08898-08898 Vulture on Roof Aug 2013
08899-09622 Philadelphia Aug 2013
09623-09638 F&M Visit Sep 2013
09639-14251 Portugal Sep 2013

As you can see from the first example, some folders might only contain a single odd photo while others may hold thousands. But not a single photo is missing in the sequence numbers of the folder names (it is easy to get the folder names into Excel and do a bit of automatic checking that verifies that the start number of any folder is the end number of the previous folder plus one).

Within those folders I retain the camera-assigned number followed by text describing the photo as the file name:

DSC23938 Churchill, Hudson Bay excursion, Eskimo Point, female bear & cub.JPG
DSC24039 Churchill, Hudson Bay excursion, Eskimo Point, female bear & cub.JPG
DSC24040 Churchill, Hudson Bay excursion, Seal Point, cabin.JPG
.
.
.
DSC24113 Churchill, Hudson Bay excursion, Seal Point, beluga watching.JPG
DSC24114 Churchill, Hudson Bay excursion, Cape Merry, beluga watching.JPG

This tells me quickly which camera was used to take the photo, and when sequential they are automatically filed chronologically. I use up to 4 levels of text description (granularity) if required, and I can quickly find a photo within a group of photos simply by scanning down the filenames. Of course, it is also easy to search the hard drive for any word in a filename.

Note that I use Automator on the Mac to do all of the filename manipulation. I also use it to copy all of these filenames into Excel, do a bit of text manipulation in columns, and generate a printout catalogue of all my photos. The Excel spreadsheet can also be easily massaged to filter on a number of criteria for searching or printing out specific subsets of filenames. And it is trivial in Excel to check the serial numbers for missing photos.

I believe I can locate any photo on my computer relatively quickly using the OS capabilities, independent of any keywords that might be specific to proprietary photo organizing software like LR, and I can be assured that I have not lost or misfiled a photo somewhere. This approach is for filing my original photos, which for me are my negatives. What I do with the photos afterwards (adjusting exposure, resizing, cropping, etc) is done in subfolders elsewhere on the computer, and it may even involve completely renaming a photo with text only, but I do not ever discard the photo or the serial number of the photo as downloaded from my memory card into my primary file structure. Storage space is not that expensive, and it would drive me crazy thinking that I had perhaps taken an interesting shot but deleted it because of some criteria at the time of culling.

Call me crazy, but I sleep easy at night, and I have ALL my memories.

JF

Thanks, Joe. I already feel noticed.

Hello Hedgehogs, and Greetings from Brampton, ON, Canada (near Toronto).

First, I apologize that my avatar is a baby groundhog, which I suspect might be a distant cousin of the hedgehog, but I hope you can overlook that and still make me feel welcome here. The photo is actually my 17th (i.e., day one) with the Sony A-57 which now has a shutter count of over 26,000.

I have been lurking on UHH daily, learning from it occasionally, but definitely enjoying (read: being entertained by) the site for quite some time. I often thought of joining in on the activity but just never made the effort to register, until today. Now that I have an account I hope to contribute to the conversations.

As a now-retired scientist (physics/biology) I consider myself reasonably adept with the technical aspects of photography, but not yet a consistently great photographer. I know about the exposure triangle, the rule of thirds and many other guidelines for getting great photos. I try conscientiously to apply these concepts in the viewfinder, but despite a camera that is about as WYSIWYG as you can get I am often surprised (disappointed?) with the outcome. Ah well, practice… practice… practice...

My very first camera was a plastic fixed-aperture/fixed-shutter-speed job that I purchased for 50 cents and 5 coupons from the backs of Allen's Candy Cigarettes (remember the TV ads of the 1950's, "Send 5 boxtops and 50 cents to get your…" ). It took half-frame photos on 127 film, so I got double the number of pictures from a roll. Yeah!!! Too bad that on a 3 x 3 inch print the only part that was in focus was an area in the middle about the size of a 50-cent piece (price of the camera???). The rest of the photo streaked radially from the centre to look something like a longer-exposure zoom effect.

My photography hobby began in earnest when I bought a Pentax Spotmatic in 1968 (the first SLR camera with TTL metering, I believe). I graduated to autofocus/autoexposure in 1986 with the purchase of the Minolta Maxxum 9000. I got into digital in 2003 with the Pentax Optio 555 (can you believe it… $750 back then!!!), and bought my Sony SLT A-57 in 2012 (I went Sony partially for compatibility with my Minolta lenses). Clearly I do not have GAS, and I don't change my gear as often as some folks do their underwear.

I have always enjoyed travel and have been to more that 80 countries so far (more than 15,000 Kodachromes; over 35,000 digital images). Some of my trips were work related but many were simply extended vacations sometimes covering 15 countries over a 3-4 month period. I have now combined my interest in travel with my photography hobby by supporting my wife's work as a travel writer ("Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause." ).

Sorry for the long intro, but it may help readers understand some of my questions and contributions. Oh, did I mention that I have a sense of humor (I love many of the jokes in the Chit-Chat section).

Cheers for now. JF.