Weekly poll: Do you title your photographs?

[Isilwen]

I rename all my files with the date (or date range if more than one day) upon import. That's it! I rename them on Flickr for display if I upload them there, but otherwise, they stay as the date. It's the only way I can keep track of my shots since they're normally candids or meant to be a record of what happened in life. I suppose if I took more abstracts or macros or whatever, that would be helpful. I was a lot like Peeper described - renamed EVERYTHING but found after a year or so that I was suck with duplicate names. Dates has been the best for me personally.

[Teewinot]

I chose the first option, but my reason needs clarification. I give titles to all my shots. Here's my definition of "all":

After each shoot, I separate out photos that I think have potential to sell. The rest I just keep in my master digital collection and they retain the file names given to them by the camera...I may or may not ever refer to them again, but I don't want to all-out delete them. So with the 'potentials' I then post-process as needed and I give each photo a label that includes year and month taken, location (state and specific location within that state), description, and a creative unique title. For example,

WI-ALSF, 2007-10, Fall Leaves, 'Autumn in the Northwoods'.jpg

When I sell a photo or give one as a gift, I'm all set to sign the print with all the necessary details! Although as I keep adding more shots to the collection, I find thinking of new titles sort of hard...i.e. I can only think of so many unique titles for shots of fall leaves!

[Nicole]

As far as my photos go, all get renamed to include the date. I just realised that I should also be adding in some sort of keyword for the photos, but that doesn't necessarily work well for photo wanders in the same way it does when I set out to take pictures of a subject. So, first everything gets renamed (and the original file name from the camera gets written into the metadata).

When I post pictures online is where the problem starts. Sometimes I manage to think of what I consider clever titles, other times it's the very basics like "Pink Flower". So I think that's where I need to work more on it, is giving the photo a better title. Or maybe I'm just strange that I don't want to call it exactly what it is lol

[Chlobo]

I do title all my photos. I try to give them interesting names, just what comes into my head when I look at the image, but I'm not very creative in that department. Sometimes when I can't think of anything or I don't know what it is called (eg. what type of tree or flower etc) I will just call it "tree".

[Pernod]

If I'm using my shots for anything at all then I give them a title.

I'm not sure why, its just something I've always done. I have even incorporated naming them as part of my processing workflow.

[Kvikken]

Pictures that I publish in a way I usually gives a title that I feel fit to the picture, it doesn't have to have anything to do with the place or the event I took the pictures in.

At first, when I answered the poll, I thought you ment pictures just uploaded to the computer, which I also title in a way. But then of course in a different way. There I use the event or the place as a title of a group of pictures taken at the same event/place.

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by Kvikken

At first, when I answered the poll, I thought you ment pictures just uploaded to the computer, which I also title in a way. But then of course in a different way. There I use the event or the place as a title of a group of pictures taken at the same event/place.

Yeah, I realised that I should have made myself clearer I still change the title on my files on my computer, but they don't have the fun names that uploaded pictures sometimes get.

[Marmalade]

I too just title photos of what they are with the date and put them in folders on discs for backup. For the ones I have alot of I number them as well, i.e. way too many hockey pictures on my flickr site. But the numbers are more for the team looking at them than for me. And it is hard to come up with 100 names for the same thing week after week. I do label the shots that scream for titles though.

[NaturesPixel]

since most of my photos are of birds and animals of sorts then i name them for what they are , i generally dont have a good imagination sooo coming up with creative names for my flower shots come up lame!!

soo i generally name them for the type of flower or Droplet for my Droplet shots... exciting eh?

[PerJr]

I guess it depends - if it's a good picture i'm gonna show other people I'll title it with a name that tells something about the picture, if it's just some "random" picture - say...of my apartment or a collection of pictures of my car - i'm too lazy to title it