885 photos IS a lot... and you delete originals?
OMG.
I do a little differently. i transfer all my photos from my phone and my camera to the laptop (for now). They go into files labeled by date. I do look thru them and delete any that are blurred out too much or like the other day at 6 am, I had several of the ground - trash bin.
my phone dates the pics with the time taken. I split photos up if I have a lot (such as I did a group of the outside of our house & then the SR mares and the boys - so they went into separate files in Original photos. I also end up grouping those by quarter 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12). Those file names would be 60916house, 60916boys and 609616srMares. Those pics from phone are dated_time and camera pics just have img1234. Then when I edit (currently use an on-line editing program called Pic Monkey dot com), I pull from those files - and did several pics. they get renamed with 16june09house133101 or 16jun09house133204 (phone puts time on it) and camera pics were 16jun09ec1234 or 16jun09wiz1238 or 16jun09kla1256 or 16jun09che1257. Then the edited pics go into separate files - house, family and ponies. In ponies file - I have them broken out into individual name files and Vicki's ponies and mixed ponies. These are the photos I will post on line - and some, even tho edited for me, don't get posted.
I have negatives & photos going back to the 80s stored (not in year order due to some being with my parents when part of their home was destroyed, some being in our storage unit in 2000 when it was broken into and stolen and some others being left in a vehicle while moving and melting together) and lost a LOT of digital ones when our 1st computer crashed... Also lost several years of original digital pics AND scanned copies of print photos (the ones I'd kept were stored on line at Photobucket at the time) when hubby and oldest daughter were transferring them from the big PC to our laptops. I think they got deleted rather than moved OR were lost in cord cyberspace when we had a power blip. It took me 2 years to scan the pics from our photo albums into a computer (using equipment at work after hours).
I was just told last weekend that I should have backup to the external drive I've got - since it's a "spin drive"(?? -could easily "crash", too)... Trying to decide how I want to back it up.
At least 1x year (usually during Xmas), I pull all the pics and put them on my external hard drive. Original pics stay grouped in the Original pics files - by year. Edited photos go - the ponies pics go into their individual files (also in folders by year) and so do family, house, equipment and event type photos (only by year if I have a lot in that year?).
Sounds pretty difficult, but it's not really! I can find any of our ponies original pics and go back to the original by looking at the date/title on the edited photo. I can go back to that original and do another edit - for size or to crop for a specific item (such as when I did close ups for my braiding files or sent pics of stifles to several vets/equine chiro and massage pros). I now provide a complete jump drive with the cropped pics of the pony when I sell that pony back to 2009 (if asked, I can provide the original shot - back to 2012, too). Most of the equine we currently have don't go any further back than that - if they do they either aren't for sale or I'd have to get a bit more creative to provide the pics (Flower has a book of photos I printed using Power Point, as do her dam and grand dam. When I was doing the books, I kept the original book and took it to Staples or Office Max and copied it for the new owner).
If I lose my external hard drive right now, I'd be quite upset. Besides all my own originals and edited shots, I have a lot of expensive digital shots from professional photographers when I had 4 ponies out showing in 2012 and 3 ponies in 2013. Only got a couple of photos actually printed out... Hmm, think I will get some jump drive (sticks) to put those on, too! I'd love to know how others have stored theirs.
I did contact a photographer for pics that I had "copies" of the proofs. I'd kept the numbers, w/ stars marking the ones I wanted to purchase, and wanted to order prints (or digital copies) of them. I was told they were 'gone'... I wasn't real happy. She did still have the proofs on line - and I was able to get some pics that way - but they aren't a good enough quality (she'd reduced the original size when put the proofs online) for larger than 3x5 prints (I'd wanted 5x7 and 8x10). She did have a good program that pulled the watermark off of them (I can't do that at all now).
