File Naming Is Important,
I have a photographic archiving background where the importance of a unique number (example, 15974) was/is the corner stone of all cataloged media/files. Years ago I realized the hard way that having just a unique number was not working on it's own, as it had no reference to when the image was created. I started to incorporate a date stamp with the file name YYMMDD (example,190215). A file name for an image would then read as 190215_WH_15974.jpg (WH = Wayne Hacker). In the last couple of months I have come to realize that this naming structure is not strong enough to out live me ( " Currently, all copyright-eligible works created on or after January 1, 1978 are protected for 70 years after the death of their author"). Plus, it has no searchable context when placed on a website or multimedia platform.
The Plan Moving Forward,
My camera no matter which one I use already creates the unique number needed (example, 1234). When I transfer the image from the memory card to the backup drive I immediately batch rename all images with following structure YYYYMMDD-Place-WHP-1234.jpg. The file name if captured today would read as 20221219-Seattle-WHP-1234.jpg. This file name is 21 characters long, and notice I'm dropping the underscores(_) and replacing them with dashes (-) making it more URL friendly. To put this in context, when I started archiving images 9 characters was considered the max, and that was over 20 years ago. The only thing I did here is to expand my knowledge and adjust my workflow to meet the current needs of the market while maintaining a unique file naming system that is not easily matched up with another photographers work if they happen to be photographing Seattle on the same day.
Time to put this new information into practice.
Thank you for your time
Wayne Hacker
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