A little bit about my image numbering system

Keeping track of your images is vitally important, especially now with digital systems being so widespread.  Coming from a history of shooting film as well as digital, I thought it might be of interest to some who read this to find out exactly how I go about numbering my images because it appears a complex system when in reality it is very simple.  It was borrowed from the system Magnum use after working in their production department.

An example image number for me would be DAW2008001N0001 for digital or DAW2008001Z01-01 for film.

To break this down, lets look at the individual parts:

• DAW -this is the photographer reference so if you have more than one photographer in the system you can identify the originator quickly.  It is very simply my initials.
• 2008 is the year of capture of the image
• 001 refers to the story number, in this case 001 which for me is for all my personal images which don’t belong in any particular story.
• Next we have the letter or letters.  I use different letters to indicate what the capture method was for an image.  The letter for the digital cameras has changed with upgrades in the past but I will probably stick with N from now on.  Having the different letters so far has helped me quickly know the native resolution of an image.

• N -Canon 1D mark 2
• CE -Canon 1d
• P – Olympus C5050z
• BW -Digital Black and White conversion
• Z -Colour Neg
• K -Colour transparency
• W -Black and White Neg

• After this the system changes very slightly for digital or film capture.  For digital the image is assigned the 4 digit number gained when the images are imported and batch renamed.  For transparency film originals the images gain a 3 digit number.  For negative film originals however each roll uses its original number, which is then followed by the frame number.  For example a colour neg image made now might be numbered DAW2008020Z01-01

Anyway, I hope this helps someone.  It is a very simple system once you get used to it and can be applied to both individual photographer’s works or a collective groups work.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Killing Time, Thames Town. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.