Organizing a photo mess any suggestions?

[Moose]

Well I'm going to try to tackle a photo mess for the family. I have boxes and boxes of loose photos ranging in age from early 1900's all the way up to present day. I also have a lot of negatives and slides but that will be after the photos are dealt with. I estimate I have 4k or more. some will not get scanned but many will. I guess before I get doing this I'm trying to figure a logical way to organize them. I was thinking of doing an excel spreadsheet and give each one a unique file so people can find what they are looking for. Additionally I'm trying to decide where to put them maybe google? I thought about drop box but then everyone that wants them will need to have an account and with the size I know it will be on the paid side. Any ideas about other options would be greatly appreciated. Additionally I'm going to set up a separate hard drive to store them as well.

Future project will be slides and negatives and I'll need to pick up a scanner to do them so if anyone has experiance with a good scanner for them let me know.

I've just never under taken such a project and I think my initial set up will be important to its sucess.

 

[roundball]

For what it's worth, I grew mine in microsoft windows.
I entitle each photo file with the date: DDMMYY

A few screenshot examples of the hierarchy:
CATEGORIES:
BIRDS:
BLUEBIRDS:
etc, etc

 

[Moose]

I don't think that will work for the simple this is photos of people and I don't have dates on most of them. I also have no idea of the total number of subjects, plus many have multiple people. I thought about saving the same photo multiple times so I could do subject catagories like you have laid out but it will vastly increase the overall size of the project.

 

[dobber]

Now your one of the retired folks and may find the need to hang with people of similar age, have you thought of joining a scrapbook club

 

[Moose]

People still scrapbook ? That must be a Canadian thing. ....

 

[woodmoose]

• Digitize
• Create a private facebook group. “Moose Family Reunion”
• Post to facebook
• Tag people / things in photo
• Done

On to next retiree project

 

[Moose]

I don't think FB will let me give the collection a good way to organize as well as I'm afraid the quality of photos may not be best so I'll be forever hunting down such and such a photo for someone to get a copy. But I like the ability to get collaboration from others who may know more about who and what about photo.
Maybe a combo between what you suggested and roundball. With the help of others to make some file names that make sense. Then when it's completed just copy them and send to who wants them.
Thanks for the suggestions so far.

 

[roundball]

I have folder names like friends, family, work, houses, cars, weddings, graduations, hunting, fishing, etc.
For example, set up a FAMILY folder...then SUBFOLDERS like:
grandparents
father
mother
brothers
sisters
children
grandchildren
cousins
etc.
etc.
It takes a little time but once you get started, it starts to grows into shape as you process photos and begin to sort them into Folders so you can easily find the GRANDPARENTS photos, etc.

 

[Moose]

I have so many photos with such a collection of combos of people and have no idea what the occasion is it when it will make organizing difficult. I've got a number of old photos that my mom was unable to tell me who they were. I'm in process of sorting..... I see many hours at the scanner

 

[sky hawk]

I was never satisfied with a folder system with categories for the reason you mentioned. What do you do when one photo could legitimately go in 3-4 different categories? You know for sure it should be in X folder, and you find it 3 years later in a different subfolder tucked away.

I prefer just having one huge rolling album by date. That's the most consistent. I can usually narrow down the season it was taken in and then get pretty close on the year. If you don't have dates, that's going to be a challenge. You could either assign them an approximate date, or go with a file number system instead. I guess you could put multiple tags on them, but that's gonna take forever.

 

[QBD2]

Just go old school with some photo albums

 

[hayco10]

There is a company that takes any form of photos and puts them on cd/dvd/flash drive so they are digital and won’t deteriorate like paper/slides/ negatives...