Notes on keeping a photo archive tidy

Short write-ups from slowly tagging about twenty years of family photos. Nothing clever, mostly things I wish I had known before starting.

Fewer keywords, used consistently

September 2026

A flat list of forty tags beats a deep hierarchy nobody remembers. What I kept, what I merged, and why places matter more than events.

Sidecar files or embedded metadata?

June 2026

XMP sidecars survive more tools than you would expect, until one of them silently drops them. A small test I now run before trusting any app.