File naming conventions

I've been going through my archive of 8 years of photography and I'm coming to the realization that file naming is very important to the archiving process. It's good to set up a system early on otherwise you'll just be doing more work in the future. In the military, combat photographers, videographers and illustrators use a system known as Visual Information Record Identification Number (VIRIN) to label their photos, videos or illustrations. A VIRIN is made of an assortment of information which help an organization as large as the military keep track of who created what. Here is an example VIRIN:

070401-M-0948M-001

The first six numbers are the date, in year, month, day format. The letter M represent the service I'm in, in the case the M stand for the Marines. The four numbers and the letter represent the last four numbers of my social security number and the first letter in my last name. And the the last three numbers represent the number of the image. The last four of the social and first letter of the last name are essential in identifying who took the picture.

This system works great in the military where you have hundreds of photographers, videographers and graphic illustrators all contributing their work to a cohesive whole. While the meta data and caption information also hold ownership information, the VIRIN allows for quick visual identification of ownership.

In my personal work the VIRIN is both unnecessary and inefficient. Because all the work I produce comes from me and is captioned and identified with my name in the meta data, I don't need to brand the file names with my social. Also because the imagery I produce in my own time with my own equipment is mine, I don't associate it with the military . So for my personal imagery I use this file naming convention:

2007_05_28_001_Memorial Day Observance_Wilmington NC

The first part of the file name is the date, it is a simple year, month, day format, but I have chosen to use the full four number year format. Also I chose to use underscores to separate information because I find it easier to read then by bunching all the information together. I don't know if I'll still be taking pictures in the year 2100, or whether I'll still even be alive, but at least with a four number year I won't have to worry about which century my photographs are from. Next I have the sequence number, followed by the event title, and the place. The last two are optional and can even be replaced with something completely different, but I try to choose something which can identify the shoot, even if different subjects are photographed over the course of a day.

When scanning years of photography this naming convention allows me to find certain photos much more quickly then by simple date naming. Also, by using this naming convention I can use any computer to scan through my files to find something. I don't have to rely on specific software which organizes photos.