So, I’d been hearing whispers here and there about this “Eric McGee” approach, or at least, that’s the name that stuck in my head for these grand ideas about organizing information perfectly. You know, everything in its right place, super structured, super efficient. And I looked at my own digital life, specifically my thousands of photos, scattered across drives, randomly named… a total disaster. “This is it,” I thought. “I’m gonna apply these Eric McGee-esque principles and create the photo archive to end all photo archives.”
I got pretty excited, not gonna lie. Grabbed a fresh notebook, and started dreaming up how I’d categorize everything. I wasn’t just thinking about simple tags; oh no, I was going full-on relational. Tables for people, tables for places, tables for events, what camera I used, the lens, the settings – if it was data, I wanted to capture it. My mind was buzzing with the possibilities of querying this perfectly structured information later on.
The Grand Design Phase
This is where I really dived in. I was sketching out these database diagrams like a man possessed. I vaguely remembered terms from some online course I once clicked through – normal forms, primary keys, foreign keys. I was like, “Yep, gonna use all of that.” I started creating tables for every little thing. A table for ‘photo_subjects’ linked to a ‘people’ table. A ‘locations’ table with lat/long, linked to an ‘events’ table. It was beautiful on paper, or so I thought. I even tried to understand what BCNF was, but mostly just got a headache.
Then came the part where I actually had to, you know, put photos into this magnificent system. I picked a fairly straightforward database program, nothing too heavy. But the data entry! Oh man. For every single photo, I found myself spending ages. Who’s in it? Okay, add to people table if new, link to photo. Where was it taken? Look up coordinates, add to location table, link to photo. What was the ‘mood’ of the photo? I actually had a ‘mood’ table. Happy, sad, contemplative… it got ridiculous.
After about a solid week of this, I think I’d managed to sort, like, maybe 70 photos. Out of thousands. And when I tried to actually find a photo? “Show me all photos of my dog, taken indoors, on a Tuesday, where the primary color is brown.” The process of trying to ask the database for stuff was becoming as complicated as putting the info in. Most of the time, I just wanted to find “that picture from the park last month.”
The “What Am I Doing?” Moment
It really hit me one evening. I was staring at this complex web of tables and relationships I’d built. It was, in theory, incredibly organized. But in practice? It was a pain. A massive, time-sucking pain. The effort I was putting in was just not worth the supposed benefit for my personal photo collection. It was becoming this monster of interconnected tables, and honestly, it felt like I needed a PhD just to find a picture of my cat.
I realized that while those “Eric McGee” type principles of extreme organization probably have their place – like, for massive corporate systems or scientific data – they were total overkill for me. I’d taken a good idea and pushed it way too far for my actual needs. I’d built a system that was more about the system itself than about making it easy to enjoy my photos.
You know, this whole experience kind of reminds me of when I tried to get super organized with my tools in the garage. I bought pegboards, drew outlines for every hammer and screwdriver, labeled every little drawer of screws and nails. It looked amazing, like something out of a magazine. First time I actually needed to do a quick repair job, I spent more time trying to put a wrench back in its perfect outline than doing the repair. Eventually, the most-used tools just ended up on the workbench again.
So, what happened with the grand photo database? I pretty much junked the super-complex version. I went back to a much simpler method: folders by year and major event, and some basic, broad tags if I felt like it. It’s not “perfect” by any academic standard, but it works for me. I can find stuff. And that’s the main thing, right? It was a good lesson, though. Understand the theory, sure, but always, always tailor it to what you actually need. Not everything needs to be engineered to the max.
