[sf-lug] What do you people use to organize your photos both locally and on the web?

[Akkana Peck]

Mikki McGee writes:
>    After looking at what was available, I decided to do it all "my way."  
> I collect art pictures from museums, and pictures of specimens of a 
> diverse group of living things; and so I upload into a directory called 
> /CAMERA, and sort and edit and same into, for example,    
> /Art/Legion/Statuary.    Or into /Arthropoda/Insecta/Lepidoptera,
>    or into /Pictures/Friends.

I tried that, but it got complicated and I gave up -- if I have a
photo that has my friend Bill and his dog, do I put duplicate copies
in Images/People/Bill and Images/Animals/Dogs? Put the pic in one
place and symlink to the other place?

I organize photos in directories by year, and within each year I
just make descriptive names for upload directories, like
Images/2011/RSA-baby-quail if I went on a hike at Rancho San
Antonio where I saw a lot of baby quail.

Then each of these directories has a Keywords file (just a text file,
keyword: file1.jpg file2.jpg ...) and I have a script that can
search recursively for keywords.

I know, you're probably thinking, "What a lot of wasted effort! 
[insert favorite big bloated Gnome app or proprietary app] can do
all that and has a GUI too!" And probably you're right. But with
my way, I can change my filing scheme or the way I access keywords
at any time, I can copy any subset of my images to another machine
(any platform) at any time, and I never have to worry about how
to migrate a database if the program ever stops being maintained or
changes its UI in a way I don't like. There are some advantages to
the old-school text file approach.

	...Akkana