ncribble Loc: Albuquerque, NM

Great suggestions, and I'll add mine. Don't let the worries of the right distract you.

START

"Do Something Even if it's Wrong..... Damit Do Something"

PhotoAZ Loc: Phoenix AZ

This may not be the most popular advice but with the volume you have to digitize THINK LIKE A PHOTO EDITOR. By that I mean you may not need to copy EVERYTHING. Yes, it would be nice but are you really going to do anything with the 12 images of little Bobby blowing out the birthday candles or the vacation shots of your shoes while you were getting the camera ready? Plus all those slides that are too over or under exposed. Yes look at each slide and frame and only put aside the ones you feel are worth keeping.

In the days of yore when I was shooting slides I would lay them out on my large light table all 36 slides and start to toss the ones I knew I would never keep. Then I would start to go through the ones that looked like others and only keep the best exposures. Then go through again and only keep the best of best. One time my wife walked in and saw the pile of slides in the trash. She pulled one and asked why I wasn't keeping this one. I showed her the one keeper that was just so much better. She still didn't like seeing all that film go to waste but maybe understood her crazy husband a little bit more.

In my camera classes, I have the students bring in the results of the last assignment. Then I tell them before I even look at them to pair them down to the best 20. When they have done that I tell them to now pair them down to the best 7 and Delete the rest. This empresses to them how to start to really see photography and not get caught up in just shooting.

So get a smaller box and a trash can and start to work. Or box everything up and send them off to be digitized and sent back to you. Once you have everything in ones and zeros then we will talk about how to organize and back them up them.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

I used a different system - arranging by subject, then by year within subject if that was appropriate. I started organizing my slides that way, then carried it forward when I scanned the slides. For example, I first arranged my slides by where I lived {a box/boxes for grad school, then a box/boxes for each residence}, a box for each vacation, a box/boxes for each place where my parents lived, …. My system worked well for slides - all slides taken at my parents’s houses were in a known group of boxes, but starting off with ‘by time’ may make more sense if LR is the organizing system.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Lightroom doesn't care how you organize your folders, subjects are just as good as dates to the software. But, the LR community recommends the universally recognized 'Best Practice' of using date-stamped folders, by years and then dates within years as in:

\2023
\2023\20230120 - Snow Pics
\2023\20230421 - Tulips on Mich Ave

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

In my system, all photos of flowers would be in a known group of boxes {tulips at various places, marigolds at various places, flower beds in various city parks}, we could look at then easily in one setting, but that may have made more sense in the days of slides. With a modern DB, you could have several sets of indexes - one by date, one by subject, etc.

bjojade Loc: Wausau, WI

For physical storage, sorting in a way that you expect to view the images could make more sense. Of course, if you change your grouping methods, it's a huge project. Digital lets you change essentially on a whim.

If you wanted to, you could throw ALL of your pictures into a single folder on a single drive and let your cataloging software find and sort groups. However, this can result in massive numbers of files in a single directory which can cause some systems to choke a bit.

You could manually put them in folders by categories and still use your catalog software to search across those folders. The downside is if you change your list of categories, now you'd need to go through and re-sort those files by hand.

This is why the best practice method of creating folders by date seems to be the most common. That's more universal and isn't something that will change, but you still can tag and sort photos into the groups you want to see.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

It does seem overwhelming but steady application will get you through it.
On retirement it might seem as if you have plenty of time to do it but tasks arise to fill that time and thinking about retirement as a time of rest destroys your work ethic and your time management. Apply yourself and keep at it.

Going through old photos can be pleasurable since you are reliving the good old days, so try not to think of it as a chore.

I would take the time to look at your slides. So they number in the hundreds? No problem. I'm sure there are some you can delete. There will be some you don't remember who what where when. There will be some that show antique relatives that you will want to keep.

The biggest problem is not the number of images, but the documentation. You probably can identify most of the people in the photos. Can your kids? Their kids? Documentation is important for the family.

Flyerace Loc: Mt Pleasant, WI

Everyone has given you some great advice. It might be a good idea, before trying to stumblebum around Lightroom, to learn the basics. There are plenty of free classes you can take online. The great thing about online, you can replay them, or even back up and relisten if you are confused.

After learning what you need to know (basics) of LR, you need to back things up. Not just LR backup, but copy this stuff to another drive. All things die eventually, best to have a copy on an external backup drive. There are plenty of options offered. Make sure you have enough room to copy/backup to the unit when you add more photos.

Good luck. Many of us have 25,000+ photos and we keep them safe by using external hard drives. I use 3 of them. They have become so affordable, I purchased 3, 8T external hard drives. Everything is on the hard drives. Keeps my computer clean for just software and the likelihood of 3 dieing at exactly the same time is remote.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

back up BEFORE learning what you need to know...

davidrb Loc: Half way there on the 45th Parallel

Welcome to where you have tried to get since forever, retirement. Before you get all your jollies excited sit down for just one moment and listen to the BAD news you overlooked. From the day you retire you NEVER GET A DAY OFF AGAIN, NEVER!!!!!

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

And no holidays or sick days or weekends off. Nothing. It’s disgusting.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

I don't know about sage but I once heard the following:
"How do you eat an elephant?
Ans*: One bite at a time".


*I had a girlfriend from South Africa who answered "Tell the butcher to cut it up and put it in the freezer for next weekends BBQ".

DHooch

Burkphoto:

Thanks for sharing your document. Very well done.

jpgto Loc: North East Tennessee

First off, congratulations on your approaching retirement. As far as 'free' time...... learn to say NO!!!! As I am sure you'll be approached by various organizations to devote some time to volunteering! I love my volunteering but I don't like to say NO and recently learned to say NO very loudly. Some days my volunteering is more hours than when I was actually working at a real job!!!!!!

I too have numerous pictures of my own that I have recently began to catalogue. I purchased an external hard drive and download images to that. I use the Year, month and day method. Make a file for the Year, ex. 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 etc to correspond to your needs. The the month.... either written or numbered! Day, usually numeric. Go from there in downloading appropriate images to the appropriate date!

Enjoy, have fun and again congratulations on the retirement.

Jeff

lmTrying Loc: WV Northern Panhandle

From one retiree to another: your situation sounds all so much like mine.

The first thing I will suggest is to pick up one or two, two terabyte external drives. Back up your computer on one.

It seems that a majority of people organize by date: year, month, day. My problem with that is, What year did I go to Disney? What year was that car show? What year did I have that dog? I can't find anything by date.

I store my photos in the computer's operating system file folders according to subjects. Starting with a file folder named Photos. Inside that folder are: Architecture, BigRigs, Cars, Christmas, Disney, Family Photos, Flowers, Landscapes, People, Phone Photos, Phone Videos, Weddings, Scans, Scans New, Scans New 2, Vacations. That's just some of them.

Inside those file folders are others. Example: inside Vacations: Daytona Beach, Disney, Harry Potter, Pigeon Forge, Virgina Beach. Then broken down by year. This is much easier for me.

Light Room can find and load from these folders.

After you back up your computer, start creating folders, by whatever method you chose, then moving whatever photos are scattered all over your computer into these files. You can create new folders as you go.

Now to get those other photos into the computer. Start with the memory cards. Load them from the card, preferably into one of those "Scan" folders. Ok, the computer may send them some place other than where you expected. No problem, after you find them, just move them to where you want them.

Next thing might be the photos. I would suggest investing in an Epson flatbed scanner in the $200-$400 range. It will do photos and slides. They can be setup to load directly into one of those "Scan" files. Don't try to do them all at one time. You will want to add information to the "img number.jpg" designation the scanner gives the photo, then move them to a different folder. Work in small batches till you get the hang of it. Working in Epson's Professional Mode will give you more options and better results. Play with all the settings in small batches till you get the hang of that. I have the Epson Perfection V600 Photo model that I ordered from, where else, Amazon. The model numbers available are always changing. And Epson's tech support is great.

After you start to get some of those photos organized onto your computer, then it is easy to simply copy that one "Photos" file folder to that second drive at the end of each day, or week.

Now you can learn Light Room.

If you can find a camera club in your area, join it. One-on-one in-person learning is always helpful, especially when starting out.

Just my way of doing it. Don't be bashful. Send a Private Message if you have questions.