At Easter with my family, there were no less than 4 cameras floating around, and every photo opportunity, they were all crammed in my face. I keep asking, ‘Why don’t you just use one camera, and then email all the photos to each other?’ They’re all digital cameras, anyways.
The answer, of course, is that it’s not that easy. Even my mom, whom I setup with a Picasa account, still sends out emails with the photos physically attached, rather than just a link to her Picasa album. My wife and I are constantly wasting time consolidating our photos from vacations, as we both use our own cameras. Mine are geotagged, since I use my phone, but hers are not, since she insists on using a stand-alone digital camera, which makes things even more frustrating. We also upload our photos to a handful of different places, most of which our friends couldn’t begin to know where to go.
My ‘backup’ system is pretty rudimentary, as well. I have a My Pictures folder that Windows Vista automatically created for me, and within there, I have a mess of subfolders. Some of these are technically ‘albums’ from a specific event, named as such (Camping 2008, Anniversary Road Trip, etc), others are synced across from my various phones, tossed carelessly into a ‘4-2009’ folder, based on when I took the photo. For redundancy, I have a drag-and-drop network share setup, with two folders, ‘Ricky’s Photos’ and ‘Christina’s Photos’.
There’s got to be a better way to do this. Jeremy Toeman puts forth a few of his own ideas, but what suggestions do you have, if any?
Note: If you respond with ‘Get a Mac and use iPhoto’, your comment will be deleted. I’ve used a Mac, recently, and I’ve used iPhoto ’09. I choose to continue using Windows, for various reasons.
Ricky Cadden 
I’m not sure that there is an ultimate solution yet. I could say “get a (real) Mac and use iPhoto”, but one look at my own iPhoto library will show you that it isn’t a perfect solution either.
I have 2 policies that work for me right now…
1. I’ll sort out all my photos when I’m retired, or hospitalised.
2. Never store photos on *my* computer that I did not personally take, no not even my wife’s!
I used to have all my photos nicely arrange, with all the best ones on Flickr, but now I take so many gadget test photos and screen grabs it’s all gone to pot. In truth, I think I’ve become more concerned about keeping my videos organised, which is obviously much easier as there are a lot less of them.
I’m not sure that there is an ultimate solution yet. I could say “get a (real) Mac and use iPhoto”, but one look at my own iPhoto library will show you that it isn’t a perfect solution either.
I have 2 policies that work for me right now…
1. I’ll sort out all my photos when I’m retired, or hospitalised.
2. Never store photos on *my* computer that I did not personally take, no not even my wife’s!
I used to have all my photos nicely arrange, with all the best ones on Flickr, but now I take so many gadget test photos and screen grabs it’s all gone to pot. In truth, I think I’ve become more concerned about keeping my videos organised, which is obviously much easier as there are a lot less of them.
Yes, videos are a whole other story – I find they’re a bigger pain, because depending on what I took them with, there may or may not be a thumbnail image, and worse, the thumbnail doesn’t always give a good idea of what the video is of. I’m forced to use the date to try to figure out when I took it, short of just firing up VLC and watching the video.
Yes, videos are a whole other story – I find they’re a bigger pain, because depending on what I took them with, there may or may not be a thumbnail image, and worse, the thumbnail doesn’t always give a good idea of what the video is of. I’m forced to use the date to try to figure out when I took it, short of just firing up VLC and watching the video.