How I Store And Catalogue My Pub Sign Photos
- arthurpeterchappell
- May 29
- 4 min read
With about 12,000 pub sign photos collected since about 2012 when I first took up the hobby of chasing up images of Inn Signs, my storage and collection of them gets quite complicated.
When I first started taking shots of them with digital cameras I stored the images on CD-ROMS, of which I have about 140, (they contain many images not relating to pubs at all too).
In about 2016, I got an external hard drive and copied all my images from the ROMS to that, and any new photos were only stored right to the external unit. Some, but not all images, were also shared on my Facebook and Pinterest pages.
Catastrophe struck in 2019 when my external drive frazzled out without warning. I approached several tech save friends hoping they could at least salvage the data, but everyone agreed that it and everything within was toast. Many images shot between 2016 and 2019 were lost forever, including hundreds of pub sign shots.
I now have a new external hard drive and also store my photos on The Cloud, though I hate myself for that as cloud storage banks around the World drain its resources, especially water, at a frightful rate.
My hard drive divides into three parent folders. A/. Inn Sign Photos. B/. All other images. C/. Text documents.
The Inn Sign folder has multiple sub-folders. The first is every pub sign image I have taken, filed by UK COUNTY with each county bearing images for its separate towns, cities and villages.
The second folder holds my Pub photos. After a few years of just photographing signs, I realized that some were confusing to locate as I might end up with five separate Royal Oak signs on my camera’s card and recalling which is from which town might be tricky so shots of the pubs help. Pubs with great designs are worth photographing anyway.
Folder three is the signs again, but only those I am likely to use in my writings or articles. Folder one includes general signs, like signs with just wording, or logos for bars like Turtle Bay. I photograph every pub’s main signage even if it isn’t very good, just for completion’s sake. The third folder excludes the useless images.
Further folders include pub porch lamps, general exterior images like mural art, year date stamps, logos, beer gardens, hanging baskets, etc, if photogenic enough.
The next is interior images of the pubs I actually go inside of.
Windows are next as some have interesting art in its own right.
I then add a chronological list of pubs filed first by the date it is known to have opened. (many pubs don’t get added as I don’t yet know their opening dates). The earliest I have in my files is the 1251 Old Man & Scythe in Bolton. The latest is from this year.
A file of the pub signs of pubs I’ve actually been in as a customer is next, followed by pubs listed by the brewery or pub-co (ie, Wetherspoons), owning the bar or having its logo on the pub signs. Free Houses are listed among these too.
A final sub-list stores my images thematically. They include:
There are signs for road, rail, air transport, ships, boats and the sea,
Royalty, heraldic images, famous people,
Historic, war and military, funny signs,
Bridges, castles, general buildings,
Animals, important to my current work on a book of signs relating to The Animal Kingdom has sign folders separating Mammals, Fish, Insects, Amphibians, Reptiles and birds. Within the mammal pages, I have a special folder for dog related images. Trees and flower themed signs get their own home.
There are folders for word only sins and also for signs which are exclusively pictorgraphic, with no wording at all. Another folder stores 3D images, such as Liverpool’s Red Door where the sign literally is a full size door hanging outside the pub.
Folders of signs I have got into print in articles and/or books get their own folder too.
Some signs go into multiple folders. A Highwayman sign may include the crime image Highwayman, weapons (gun and or rapier) stagecoach (history and road transport) and animals (horses).
I also have a folder of signs shared with me by others, which I carefully keep separate from those taken by myself.
So, after the photo is taken, editing it and housing it follows, and sometimes images migrate round from folder to folder. This helps me think up more writing projects, iron out errors, and keep my hobby active even on long cold wet days when I can’t get out taking new images.
Oh, I almost forgot board art outside pubs being included too.
It’s all part of the fun.
Links
The Inn Sign Society https://innsignsociety.com/
Pubs Galore https://www.pubsgalore.co.uk/
All photos here taken by myself.
Arthur Chappell
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