Advice requested - What is the best way to enter incomplete Place tags

[pgrondin]

I would appreciate some advice.

I often have photos that have a named Location but no associated City.

I also have many photos of France, where I do not want to deal with New vs Old "State" definitions.

For example if I have a location, not near a city, I could enter the data in two ways:

Canada/Ontario/City(blank)/Algonquin Park,

or I could enter

Canada/Ontario/Algonquin Park/Location(Blank)

Is either of these the recommended way to deal with this, or is consistency itself the solution?

Thanks,

Peter

[Uwe]

Hello,

I prefer version one: Canada\Ontario\blank\Alonquin Park

I use it it this way if there is e.g. a National Park located in more than one State or City. I understand the Places Tag as a "postal regional structure". One can't use this structure to describe each political, geographical or biological structure/location. This can be done e.g. either by self defined Keyword Tags or Custom Tags additional to the Places Tag.

Regards, Uwe

Edited May 2, 2021 by Uwe

[WilfriedB]

5 hours ago, pgrondin said:

if I have a location, not near a city

Hi Peter, I prefer use one of the cities suggested by GeoSetter (i.e. GeoNames.org). In many cases in the 'middle of nowhere', you see multiple suggestions and I pick the most reasonable, but many times I rename it later, which is quite easy using the Daminion tag tree (not each individual properties panel!)

5 hours ago, pgrondin said:

I do not want to deal with New vs Old "State" definitions

Depends on what you call a state in France: département or région? As far as I know, the départements very rarely did change, but the régions changed drastically several years ago. Anyway, I use the current région - département assignment (using french Wikipedia to understand) and then used the rename function in the tags tree to change my old names and ensure consistence.

In addition, I wanted to use both département and région (plus the number of the département) and came up with a scheme: 'région xx département' for the state. For example from  'Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes 01 Ain' to 'Provence-Alpes-Côtes-d'Azur 84 Vaucluse'. 

Most complicated (as usual 😃 ) is Paris. So I ended up with 'Île-de-France 75 Paris' for the state; '05 Panthéon' (05 = arrondissement) for city and 'Place de la Contrescarpe' for location. Again, I might change this in the future. For the location, I used the quartier in some areas of Paris, since it appears more logical to me, but didn't spend the time to change it consistently.

In general Location is my very own definition, also depending on how many pictures I made at a single place.

cheers
Wilfried

[WilfriedB]

5 hours ago, pgrondin said:

a location, not near a city

I think, you shouldn't take the term city literally. It can be a small town or even the closest village. All depending on how many pictures you made in the area at all times. The purpose is to group your images in a consistent way to help finding them again.

[Erwin]

Hi Peter

for me the fourth entry "Location" is the name of a certain place.
So like this: botanical garden, train station, on the bridge, etc.
However, I do not use a "blank" but a "-"
I do it like this:
Canada / Ontario / - / Algonquin Park
regards
Erwin

[lintujuh]

IMO the key is consistency; decide your method and try to stick to that. Then it is easier to tag new images and find the old ones.

I have used the same principles as Uwe and Wilfried. I have decided, that in my collections City is the municipality where the location is. The place is then the village, or district/borough of the city (arrondisément). Also like Wilfried, I have been here more flexible.

Uwe's suggestion of creating a parallel structure is also a good one, you could have a keyword tree National parks/Canada/Ontario/Algonquin Park. In this structure you could also leave state out, if there aren't too many national parks in Canada that you have/will be visiting. Like Wilfried mentions, look at the number of images you have, so you don't overcomplicate your tagging.

[pgrondin]

I would like to sincerely thank you all for your thoughtful replies.

After consideration, I have decided that I will be ignoring the "Names" provided for the Place tags, and just entering a structured list that will enable the family to find images again.

For example:

If the photos are from a canoe trip down the Ottawa river, which is the boundary between Ontario, and Quebec, I would just enter Canada / Ottawa River.

If the photos are from our cottage in Alberta, I would enter Canada / Alberta / Cottage.

This is much easier to find than trying to remember at some future time, which  "State" or "City" I entered. If I want to find Sleeping Giant Park photos, I do not want to have to remember, or have someone else try to figure out, whether I decided it was closest to Thunder Bay, Red Rock, or Pass Lake as a "City". We will easily find : Canada / Ontario / Sleeping Giant.

Thanks for helping me figure out what will work for us.

Peter

[WilfriedB]

5 hours ago, pgrondin said:

If I want to find Sleeping Giant Park photos, I do not want to have to remember, or have someone else try to figure out, whether I decided it was closest to Thunder Bay, Red Rock, or Pass Lake as a "City". We will easily find : Canada / Ontario / Sleeping Giant.

I recently changed my habits a little bit, by adding the name of frequently photographed places (e.g. 'Sleep Giant') not or not only to the Location tag, but also to the keywords. There are several reasons for doing so:

• You can easily search for keywords using the <Filter Tags> on top of the tags tree. This does not work for place tags (until version 6.8 at least*) and if you visited many places in different countries, it is quite cumbersome to navigate the Place tree.
• In some cases, I found it useful to make a difference between the place the picture was taken and the object visible on the pictures. Again, this makes most sense when you made many pictures (mountain, tower ...) from different perspectives.
• If you made many pictures at a single location (e.g. a park), you can add the name of the park as Location and each individual object as keyword.

* If I understood correctly, this was added for version 7 of Daminion, but I didn't try it yet  😞

Wilfried