Image File Naming

In my last post (Scan, Scan, Scan), I wrote about how I got so far into scanning my photos. With (now) over 135,000 photos in my Lightroom catalog, and more than 20,000 of them scanned from film (I just did a more accurate count - I'm close to 27,000 scanned photos), I had to come up with a naming strategy that works long term.

Early in my photography days, I wrote descriptions on the frames of my 2x2-mounted 35mm slides. Something like "Playing Baseball in Front Yard". When I first started scanning, that was my scanned image name. It didn't take long to figure out that this wouldn't work. What if I had two photos with the same subject? So I started adding "-1" or "-2" to the names. It was clear this wouldn't work for long, either.

I tried a number of different schemes, but didn't hit on anything I really liked. That is, until I ran across a book, The DAM Book, Digital Asset Management for Photographers, that gave me the insight I needed. The Second Edition of this book is worth having on your bookshelf if you take a lot of photos. (There is way more than file naming information in this book.)

My filenames now look like this: gbs_20170304_5156.dng. Let me expand on this for you:

• gbs - my initials. If I scan photos belonging to someone else, I use their initials. 
• 20170304 - The date. That should be obvious. YYYYMMDD - 4 digits for the year, 2 digits for the month, and two digits for the day. Month and day are always 2 digits. For example February 15, 1995 would be 19950215. This way you can sort chronologically just by ordering the files by filename. 
• 5156 - the sequence number from my digital camera. If the camera uses a different numbering scheme, then I use that. For instance, files from my Panasonic Point-and-Shoot camera end up looking like this: gbs_20170219_1040995.jpg. And from my Android phone, like this: gbs_2017-02-17 14.32.55.jpg (OK, that sort of breaks the sorting rules, but that's the way it is).
• And, obviously, the file type - .dng (Digital Negative), .jpg (JPEG), etc. 

The good thing is that Lightroom lets me import my photos from my camera into this (these) format(s) very easily, so there is no manual renaming needed. 

What about scanned photos? They don't have an embedded sequence number. Again, I've done lots of experimenting through the years. The bottom line is that I only need to 1) uniquely name the files, and 2) be able to sort them into some semblance of order. 

I started out naming files like this (before I had completely formed my naming standard): gbs_19950721(05). The number in parentheses at the end was the frame number from the roll of film. That worked... until I shot two rolls of film in a day. Then I added 100 to the frame number for the next roll, becoming gbs_19950721(105). But that felt clumsy. And did I reset the number for the next date, or did I keep the 100 until I finished the roll?

Since ancient times (1960s or 1970s), I had kept my rolls of film numbered through the year, so a roll of film would be Roll (for example) 1988-12. Duh! Simple! I don't think I ever shot more than 100 rolls of film in a year, so I started numbering my images like this: gbs_19880325_1206. The 1206 is frame 6 of roll 12. And if you shot more than I did, just make the roll number 3 digits long. 

That leaves only one set of images with which that I don't follow this standard. I have a few boxes of loose black and white negatives. One of those boxes appears to be photos my grandfather shot starting around 1920 and continuing at least into the 1940s. There are no dates. There are no frame numbers. The rules are completely broken. At this time I'm just trying to preserve them. I'm placing them in folders that indicate who I think shot them, and they are simply named Image001.jpg, Image002.jpg, etc. As I find out more about them, I rename and catalog them. For instance, I found a photo of my Mother's first birthday - I can come pretty close to when that photo was shot , so I've renamed it accordingly. Of course, the sequence number is fiction.

Stay tuned. My on-disk organization might be next (or not). 

Of course, I must include a photo. This is photo gbs_19740317_0012.tif. Clearly it was shot March 17, 1974. It is the 12th frame on the roll of film, and I scanned this photo before I fully developed my naming standard. The photo shows Kettle Falls on the Columbia River near the town of Kettle Falls, Washington. It was taken the last time Kettle Falls was visible when the level of Lake Roosevelt was lowered during construction of the Third Powerhouse of Grand Coulee Dam.