Date Stamp

My family is close to a big milestone, our oldest is graduating from high school! As a surprise for his graduation, I am putting together a mini-video of sequential images with music. It has been an awesome project, where I have learned many things about my photo organization. I would love to share a bit of advice on an issue that has consumed most of my time while working on this project. "What year was this"?

The photos posted above are just a few examples of images where I am unsure of the place, time or context.

I always thought I was doing a great job of keeping things in order. But it appears that an unbelievable amount of photos missed being categorized, leaving me to ponder, call relatives, or ask my husband to check his running journals (he records all events in annual running journals). All of that takes time and really dilutes your enthusiasm for the project at hand.

If you are not using a formal set up for digital photo storage such as Lightbox, iphoto or Photoshop, try to rename the photos you upload adding at least the year the photo was taken. Taking time to add this date stamp to your images will then allow you to further compile into monthly, quarterly or annual folders. Also, while renaming, you have the opportunity to edit images, removing duplicates, bad photos, etc.

Does anyone else have suggestions on organizing digital photo files without using a software program?