Having a well thought-out archive for your digital photographs is so important that it outweighs everything else. After all, if you can't find one of your photographs, it's as if you never shot it. You need to have an easy-to-use system that tracks your photographs and allows you to find what you've shot.

Ingredients of a successful archive:

It's Well Organized

Your photographs need to be kept organized in an efficient manner. A good place to begin is to start sorting your photographs by date. Keep them in directories with the date they were taken. Dates never repeat, so you won't run into having two directories titled "wedding" or "mom" or "birthday."

It's Searchable

An archive must be searchable. How much searchable information you put into your archive is optional, but a basic archive should have the following info: date, the subjects' names, and the location the photograph was taken.

It's Automated

The less work you have to do the better. You don't want to dread the archive process. My rule of thumb is to make the computer do as much of the work as possible so that I can stay out making photographs.

It's a Habit

An archive is always expanding. And as it grows, maintaining it can become quite a chore. But you need to make archiving a habit. Once you're set up, it might take only a few minutes a day to archive your work. But if you get behind, those minutes add up quick. And unless you're caught up your archive is not fully functional.

Basic Archives - Text Databases

At the basic level, your archive could be as simple as a word processing document that is a list of your photographs. In this case, for every photo situation you should list (at the very least):

The date the photos were taken. Use the same date format every time, with a four digit year. For example: 01/14/2007

The subject of the photo shoot. Even a brief description, with the names of any subjects or locations will be very helpful. For example: Henry Jacobs and Pam Higgens wedding at Martha's Vineyard.

The location of the photographs. Which hard drive or CD/DVD are the photos on? If you can't locate the file, your archive is completely worthless.

Photo Archiving Programs

Digital Asset Management programs like Adobe's Bridge, Extensis' Portfolio, Microsoft's Expression Media, or Apple's iPhoto are designed to do most the archive work for you. Programs like these create visual databases of your photographs, allowing you to organize and search your photo collection very easily. They, and others, range in price from free to two-hundred dollars.

These types of programs bring up a window that you can drag your photographs onto, which begins the import process. Some of these programs will also import photos directly from your digital camera. Once imported, the photos can be viewed, sorted, ranked by quality, and captioned.

You'll want to do some research to see which program is best for you. Most companies offer free 30-day demo version of their software that you can download one and try it out. These programs all work slightly different, so if one isn't a comfortable fit for you, try another one.

If your computer comes with a free photo management application like Apple's iPhoto, give it a shot. You may outgrow it, but it's a good place to start.