[Words]

There's a range of 'photo management' packages around all of which will allow you to tag photos with key words. I've never had the patience to use them though.

The first step is keeping them in date order. When I upload photos from my camera, each day's set goes into its own folder in the form year_month_day (so yesterday was 2009_06_27). This helps Windows keep them in order. I have also set my Canon software to name the files in date sequence when they're uploaded, so a photo from yesterday will automatically be numbered as 270609xxxx (where the xxxx = the frame number). This means I can identify the date of any shot just by the file name. The third bit of this process is to edit an example of each key subject (so one fox, one kestrel etc) and name it as fox_270609xxxx etc. That way whatever the software limitations I can always search the hard drive for subjects, and know which day to look in for more.

It sounds complicated but I've found it far quicker and consistent than trying to tag every shot (unless you batch similar subjects together).