Ive gotten a few requests to explain how I am able to find my images so quickly. My storage system has evolved over the years, but this is the gist of it:

– The Drive is Named for the year, in this case: “2013-A” (being my main drive) and 2013-B (as the back up). The drives appear identical, so I label them with a sharpie, or a label.

– Each month I make a new Folder: “Jan” for example

– Every shoot has the numeric date, with a specific location and/or name for that particular shoot. An Example would be “1-15-13-Disney-Willises”

– In Each Shoot Folder, there can be 2-6 folders, depending on what I am doing. I typically shoot in RAW so I import my RAWs, edit them, rename them (also date and subject) and then export to JPEGs. (very typical for a basic photoshoot). If there are any PSDs or Web Optimized files, I like to have them in the same folder.

A. RAWs
B. JPEGs
C. PSDs
D. Webfiles

If it is is video project, I might have:

E. “RAW Footage” (original movie files)
F. “Video Projects” in there as well.

Once all the editing is finished, I drag the completed folder over to the correct month in “2013-B” which makes an identical copy of everything in “2013-A”.

So whenever I do a shoot, I only need to remember which year it was done in, grab that drive and then do a search for the subject, or location of the shoot and it pulls it up. I can also search by date.

Ive been sticking with this system for the last 3 years, and so far it has worked great. The thing I love about it is it doesn’t take any more hard drive space.

If the shoot was for a customer, I copy the JPEGs to a Thumbdrive and I also have the option to backup JPGs to the cloud.

I hope this makes sense. Typically when I say “I hope this makes sense” it means deep down, I know it doesnt make sense.

Looks like Ill need to make a video about this.