A Few Fotos From Forlorn Folders

forlorn - adjective
     1. pitifully sad and abandoned or lonely

Today I show 9 images taken between 06 March 2014 and 26 Aug 2017. Why am I showing images from 2014? Well, I have a lot of photos taken in 2014 that no one has ever seen. If I'm not showing them to anyone, why am I keeping them? Good question. I will try to answer, but first, let me tell you about the magnitude of the problem.

This is a graph of the number of files in my Lightroom catalog devoted, primarily, to photos of birds and other animals. The x axis represents years since I purchased my first DSLR camera. The y axis (unlabelled because I wish to minimize the embarrassment produced by this graph) represents number of photos in the catalog. The blue line shows the accumulation of the raw files over the 10 years. These are photos that are in focus and are not grossly over- or under-exposed. The subject is represented by a reasonable number of pixels. All others were deleted. The raw files need at least minor processing before presentation and I do very little processing of a file in Lightroom before transferring it to Photoshop. The files processed in Photoshop are saved as tif files. So, almost every photo on my web sites or that has been posted to Facebook or G+ was saved as a tif file. The red line shows the accumulation of tif files over the 10 years (continued below).

Click on images to see a larger version.


White-breasted Nuthatch, Patagonia, AZ - 2014

White-breasted Nuthatch, Patagonia, AZ - 2014

Nikon D300, 500mm f/4
1/320 sec at f/7.1, ISO 800


     When you stop laughing about the graph and the difference between total number of photos saved and the number that have been processed, read my rationalizations. How do I account for the discrepancy between the curves by factors other than sloth or lack of discipline? (continued below)


Northern Flicker (Red-shafted), Steamboat Springs area (CO) - 2014

Northern Flicker (Red-shafted), Steamboat Springs area (CO) - 2014
Nikon D7100, 500mm f/4, handheld
1/3200 sec at f/5, ISO 320

     1. Shooting at high frame rates. I strive to acquire good photos of birds in flight or engaged in some other activity. To freeze the motion of the bird, I use high shutter speeds and shoot in burst mode. The cameras I used during the 10 years represented in the graph had maximal burst rates between 6 and 10 frames per second (fps). When I return from a successful outing, my memory card will contain many files, most representing samples of the behavior of a bird taken about  100 msec before the sample in the next file. But I may fully process only 1 of 10 shots of a bird in flight, selecting, for example, the image with the wings in preferred positions (continued below). 


Black-crested Titmouse, South LLano River State Park (TX) - 2016

Black-crested Titmouse, South LLano River State Park (TX) - 2016
Nikon D500, 500mm f/4
1/1600 sec at f/7.1, ISO 4000

     2. An ingrained reluctance to erase or delete data. This is mostly a carry over from my years in the lab; my fingers often refuse to press the delete key. Also, I have the undesireable ability to find something of interest in almost every file. Why did I save the image of an American Bittern, small in the frame, flying away from me in a direction in which the head is not visible? Look at the interesting pattern of feathers on the back of that bird. You don't see that in the portrait of the bird when it is facing the camera. Many photos lacking artistic value show features that are helpful in the identification of the bird. Recently I have tried to compensate for the difficulty I have deleting photos by creating a mirror Lightroom catalog named FFFF_archive (Fur, Fin, Feather, Fuzzy). My fingers do not rebel when I remove files from the main catalog by sending them to another catalog. The fingers say this isn't destroying data, it is merely filing it in a different location. It doesn't matter that I may never look at those images again. Unfortunately, I did not adopt this strategy until last year (continued below).


Brown Pelican, Pensacola FL - 2017
 

Brown Pelican, Pensacola FL - 2017
Nikon D500, 300mm f/4 + 2x teleconverter, handheld
1/3200 sec at f/10, ISO 2500

The goal of this photo and others taken this day was to test the performance of the Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/4E PF ED VR lens when used with the Nikon TC-20E III 2x Teleconverter. 


     3. It is more fun being outdoors in beautiful places taking photos than it is sitting in front of a monitor processing files (continued below).


Roseate Spoonbill, High Island Smith Oaks (TX) - 2017
 

Roseate Spoonbill, High Island Smith Oaks (TX) - 2017
Nikon D500, 500mm f/4 + 1.4x teleconverter, handheld
1/3200 sec, f/9, ISO 800

     One of my goals for 2018 is to bring the two curves shown in the graph closer together. As I go through the folders moving images to the FFFF_archive catalog, I will also be "restoring" photos I took during the first few years after adopting photography as a retirement hobby and, hopefully, finding and posting abandoned "keepers". 


White-faced Ibis, Bolivar Peninsula (TX) - 2017
 

White-faced Ibis, Bolivar Peninsula (TX) - 2017
Nikon D500, 500mm f/4 + 1.4x teleconverter
1/3200 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1600


Lark Sparrow, El Paso County (CO) - 2017
 

Lark Sparrow, El Paso County (CO) - 2017
Nikon D500, 500mm f/4
1/1250 sec at f/5.6, ISO 220


Brown-headed Cowbird, East of Amidon (ND) - 2017
 

Brown-headed Cowbird, East of Amidon (ND) - 2017
Nikon D500, 500mm f/4 + 1.4x teleconverter
1/1250 sec, f/7.1, ISO 220


Pine Siskin, Lake DeWeese near Westcliffe (CO) - 2017
 

Pine Siskin, Lake DeWeese near Westcliffe (CO) - 2017
 Nikon D500, 500mm f/4
1/2500 sec at f/7.1, ISO 800

David Sparks

I retired in 2005 after 40 years of research and teaching at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (24 years), the University of Pennsylvania (8 years) and the Baylor College of Medicine (8 years). Photography is my retirement hobby.

Nature photography, especially bird photography, combines a number of things that I really enjoy: bird-watching, being outdoors, photography, travel, messing about with computers, and learning new skills and concepts.  I now spend much of my time engaged in these activities.

David Sibley in the preface to The Sibley Guide to Birds wrote "Birds are beautiful, in spectacular as well as subtle ways; their colors, shapes, actions, and sounds are among the most aesthetically pleasing in nature."  My goal is to acquire images that capture the beauty and uniqueness of selected species as well as images that highlight the engaging behaviors the birds exhibit.