I'm at around 950k photos and quickly approaching a catalog of 1 million photos/videos in Lightroom Classic.
Like most other said, I have a dual structure, organizing both by folder names and file name and then doing tagging, mapping, and facial recognition in Lightroom Classic.
Folder structure starts with years, then each month, then I do a folder for each day. If there are multiple events in a day then I do say 2023-11-23 1 Thanksgiving Lunch at my parents @ Address and then a second folder, 2023-11-23 2 Thanksgiving Dinner at in-laws @ address. If I shoot with more than one camera I do a subfolder for each camera within that. I like this structure as I can search for things without having to open Lightroom necessarily to find all my Thanksgiving photos for example.
In LR I rename all files to a YYYY-MM-DD_Camera_0000X.jpg or .nef and then everything is sorted, even if the file structure is lost somehow.
Once renamed I do facial recognition scans so I can see how my kids, family, and friends have grown up/aged, then I pin photos on the map for geolocation purposes. After that I tag the photos with relevant information and then move them to my NAS archive which is backed up to a cloud service and syncs to an external HDD at work.
No suggestions on how to "put them to work" really. Maybe getting a SmugMug or Flickr account where you can upload them as well and make them available to your family. I know that Synology has a photo app as well if you get a NAS from them that you can probably share them with your family and friends that way.
I'm at around 950k photos and quickly approaching a catalog of 1 million photos/videos in Lightroom Classic.
Like most other said, I have a dual structure, organizing both by folder names and file name and then doing tagging, mapping, and facial recognition in Lightroom Classic.
Folder structure starts with years, then each month, then I do a folder for each day. If there are multiple events in a day then I do say 2023-11-23 1 Thanksgiving Lunch at my parents @ Address and then a second folder, 2023-11-23 2 Thanksgiving Dinner at in-laws @ address. If I shoot with more than one camera I do a subfolder for each camera within that. I like this structure as I can search for things without having to open Lightroom necessarily to find all my Thanksgiving photos for example.
In LR I rename all files to a YYYY-MM-DD_Camera_0000X.jpg or .nef and then everything is sorted, even if the file structure is lost somehow.
Once renamed I do facial recognition scans so I can see how my kids, family, and friends have grown up/aged, then I pin photos on the map for geolocation purposes. After that I tag the photos with relevant information and then move them to my NAS archive which is backed up to a cloud service and syncs to an external HDD at work.
No suggestions on how to "put them to work" really. Maybe getting a SmugMug or Flickr account where you can upload them as well and make them available to your family. I know that Synology has a photo app as well if you get a NAS from them that you can probably share them with your family and friends that way.