For the past three years I have been using a “Cloud” service for storing my photos. Photos that I take with my smartphone are automatically uploaded. I still have to manually transfer photos that we take with our digital camera to a computer, and from there I upload them to the cloud. I can view my photos from any web browser or via an app on my smartphone. I have 1TB of free storage, and when that runs out I can pay to add more. The service I use is Flickr by Yahoo. I had to create a Yahoo account first, before I could use Flickr, but it’s all free. I do get a little concerned about whether Yahoo will still be in business in ten years time, so periodically I select and store my favorite photos to a hard drive that sits on our home network (known as a NAS drive – Network Attached Storage).
There are dozens of applications and services designed to help you organize your digital photos. There’s even a company that will do all the heavy lifting for you (for a fee) to get all your existing photos properly organized – http://www.everpresent.life/fresh-start/ Another alternative to the cloud approach is to use Amazon. They will let you store an unlimited number of files for $5 per month, or, if you are a Prime member already, an unlimited number of digital photos can be stored.
However, with a little understanding of file management basics (http://www.thefriendlytechguy.com/?p=89), some practice and some dedicated effort, you can create your own system for organizing your digital photos. You can store them “locally” on your computer’s hard drive, or you can buy an external USB drive and dedicate it to the task of storing your photos. Create a new folder for each set of photos that you decide to store, naming the folder by the current date for example, or for the subject title.