Photo retention and organization

[adam613]

So Brian's thread on photo storage got me thinking...I usually take 12 or so shots of each aircraft, especially now that I have a fast camera, but when I do that, two or so usually stand out from the rest. I generally store each spotting trip in a folder using Adobe Bridge, and then do the following for each aircraft:

1) Delete any clear rejects (part of the plane cut off, flying past that *&$#$# tree at the Mounds, etc)
2) Batch rename the rest with the aircraft reg
3) Add appropriate tags (I made tags for each type, airline, and airport I've seen)
4) Tag photos I've post-processed as 'edited'
5) I'll probably start messing with stars at some point.

This makes it easy to tell what I've seen before, but it takes forever. Does anyone have any more efficient system? Do you generally keep photos that aren't clear keepers at all?

[cancidas]

i usually keep all of the pix i take during a trip in a dedicated folder for that trip. that goes for whatever i shoot, beit aviation or not:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o161/cancidas/folderviewphotography.jpg

all the eddited pix i rename in suck a way that there won't be a duplicate filename on a.net or jp.net when i upload them and keep them in the "edits" folder you see above:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o161/cancidas/folderviewedits.jpg

[pgengler]

One of the most interesting things I read about managing digital photo collections was "The DAM Book". DAM is Digital Asset Management, and the author has a lot of good points about how to organize things.

Most of what I took away from it was the importance of embedding metadata in files. Basically, all the information about a photo is stored in the header of the photo, so that it's always there no what structure is used for organizing the actual files. So now my first step with my photos after copying them from the card is to add metadata. I put in my contact & copyright information, then add keywords to each photo. (This is all done with Adobe Bridge.) I add keywords for the airport, airline, type of plane, and registration. Then I start going through and rating the photos. Bridge lets you assign a star rating to each photo, between 1 and 5 stars.

I use one star for photos with unrecoverable problems: out of focus, blurry, too soft, obstructed, cut off, etc. I don't delete these photos yet, but they're the ones I would definitely get rid of if I needed to clean house. Two stars is for photos that have "creative" issues; stuff like compositions I don't like or 15 of the 16 photos I took in a burst. Three stars is for photos I make the effort to process, and end up posting online. Four stars is for exceptional photos, and five stars is unused at present.

I currently have everything organized into folders by day/event. For example, had I been out spotting at JFK today I'd have a folder called "2007-01-09 JFK spotting". If I also hit LGA, I'd have a second folder called "2007-01-09 LGA spotting".