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Catching up…A mere 8,391 photos to process, upload, display

Photo processing - the long slog

One of two directories worth of “good” photos that I just need to finish processing, and put somewhere where they’ll see the light of day.

Uh…yeah. I’m running a bit behind in terms of processing photos.  Starting in around, oh…2012…I got lazy. Instead of processing photos from a trip rather quickly to ensure I actually DID it, I let them languish. I’d occasionally go back and revisit old shoots, but the photos kept piling up.  Now I didn’t just completely ignore photos from a trip. For all of these photo shoots since early 2014, I DID go in and thin out all the bad photos. I converted the remaining photos from RAW and did some basic image processing. All these photos are thus “good” shots that I’ve just never done anything with. I haven’t cataloged them.  I haven’t put them on my own website. I haven’t put them on any of the photo sites where I have accounts. No Facebook, no Twitter…these are photos that are almost ready to go, but have never seen the light of day.

I’m now finding that on days I don’t go birding, I can pretty much do some virtual birding in my upstairs office, perusing all these unprocessed photos and getting them out on my website and elsewhere.  I’m finding SO many photos that I didn’t know I had! Species I didn’t remember shooting!  Wonderful scenes and settings that have since slipped my mind! So, I’ve decided to take a break. Take a break from going out quite as often as I’m used, and instead, catching up on the photos that I DO have.

Two directories worth of photos…one with 4,491 photos, one with 3,900 photos, all in need of polishing and uploading to somewhere that people can actually see them!  I’m going through it rather randomly, going back to some trip from 2012, back to 2018, etc. Not only am I “discovering” some nice photos, I’m finding photos that may be some of my favorite photos of all time!

No idea how long this will take, but it’s a nice way to spend days I don’t go out birding. Here’s a more recent photo, from Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado earlier this summer.

Woodhouse's Scrub Jay - Aphelocoma woodhouseii

 

Photo of the Day: Broad-tailed Hummingbird

I was going to go birding today, but alas, my Sjogren’s was flaring up and I wasn’t feeling very good. I stayed home and started processing my (many thousands) of old, unprocessed photos.  I have SO many photos I’ve taken over the years, and so many photos that I have yet to publish online (even on my massive out-of-control website), that I thought I’d start a new feature on my blog…the Photo of the Day. Oh, make no mistake, there’s no way I’ll ever publish a new photo of the day, every day.  Consider it more the photo for THAT day, rather than a series of daily photos. 🙂

First up…one of my favorite photos from our recent vacation to Colorado and Utah.  We visited 12 different National Parks and National Monuments in Colorado and Utah, and as we wound our way through Colorado, we stopped for one night at Winter Park, Colorado. When on vacation, I typically get my birding fix in during the early morning hours, waking before dawn and going out while my wife and son sleep in.  From our room, we could see a trail that ran along the shores of the Fraser River, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I was a bit surprised when I got out that morning, in that the warm summer’s day started out with a chilly 38-degree morning!  I started walking the trail just as the sun came up, but it took 20 minutes or so before the sun peeked over the adjacent ridge and started to brighten the area along the trail. Birds were a bit sluggish at first, perhaps because of the cold.  As I walked along, I saw a tiny bird on the top of a bush. As I approached, I saw a stubborn Broad-tailed Hummingbird, one who decided he wasn’t moving for any reason.

A challenge when shooting hummingbirds is getting the right light for the gorget of a male to “light up”.  I took many photos of this bird, but alas, for most of the time I spent with him, he was facing away from the sun. It wasn’t until I was about to move on that he shifted position, gave me a look, and then turned his head towards the sun.  BOOM…that brilliant magenta gorget lit up in the early morning’s sun as I took photo after photo.  The close range, the detail in the plumage, the clean background, and that gorgeous bright gorget made this one of my favorite photos from the trip.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus)

Male Broad-tailed Hummingbird, hanging out on a sunny perch on a cold Colorado morning.

Owl Fledgling Video

Not anything of mine, but ran across this video of an young owl having a standoff with a police officer and had to share…

http://gazette.com/owl-with-an-attitude-wins-face-off-with-colorado-deputy/article/1556220

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