Organising Your Photos with Google Photos
Last week I wrote about managing our file sizes. This week’s observation, from preparing our club exhibition, is that we all struggle to find specific pictures when we need them. I have seen a lot of frantic scrolling up and down through hundreds of photos on phones and tablets in search of that one image we know is there somewhere.
I use Lightroom to manage my photo catalogue and I do a bit of file management after every shoot, or at least once a week for those occasional grab shots. Now that we are all taking more photos, we all need to adopt a similar management habit. Since I seem to be the only one using Lightroom, I want to encourage everyone else to use Google Photos for this purpose.
Google Photos is not just a place to back up your images — it’s a powerful photo management system that works across phones, tablets, and computers. It automatically arranges your pictures by date and location, and has a remarkably capable search tool. You can search for people, places, or even objects — type “dog”, “door”, “bench”, or “sunset” and it will find all the photos that match.
Using Albums to Stay Organised
Albums are one of the most useful and underused features in Google Photos. Creating albums helps you group related photos and makes it much easier to locate them later. I suggest three types of albums:
Event albums – for specific occasions such as a holiday, day trip, or club outing.
Project albums – for ongoing themes or creative projects (for example, “Reflections” or “Mono Work”).
WGPC Uploads album – a collection of all the images you’ve shared with the club, so you have your best work in one place.
How to Create an Album
Open Google Photos on your phone, tablet, or computer.
Tap or click Library at the bottom of the screen.
Choose New album (on desktop, click “+ Create album”).
Give your album a clear name such as “Lacock Abbey Visit” or “WGPC Exhibition 2025”.
Select the photos you want to include, then tap Add or Done.
You can add more photos later by opening the album and tapping the Add photos icon.
Sharing Albums
Once your album is ready, you can easily share it:
Open the album and tap the Share icon.
Select Create link.
Copy the link and share it by email, message, or within our club group.
Anyone with the link can view the full-quality versions without you needing to resize or compress them.
Sharing via Google Photos avoids the pitfalls of sending images through WhatsApp or email, which often reduce image quality and strip away important information such as dates and metadata. Links to albums also make it easier for us to include your work in club projects and exhibitions.
In Summary
Google Photos is more than just cloud storage; it’s an excellent way to organise, search, and share your photographic work. Spend a few minutes after each shoot sorting your photos into albums and you’ll soon discover how easy it is to find and share your images whenever inspiration strikes.