Over the last few weeks, we've visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Smallwood State Park in Maryland; taken a 10-day road trip that contained Detroit, Mackinac, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago, and northwest Indiana; then last weekend we were at my wife's cousin's wedding in Philadelphia.
At Gettysburg, my wife decided we needed pictures of every monument/tablet/marker we saw. For the uninitiated, there are something like 850 monuments and tablets there (fortunately, we didn't see all of them!). She also started taking pictures of the individual company markers which aren't included in that 850 - for example, a (and please excuse me for screwing up the military terms) unit might have three or six companies, so there will be the main monument to the unit, then sometimes there will be three to six more markers for the individual companies. (The company markers are relatively rare, fortunately, other than those along the Union line.) We took over 300 pictures, most of which we kept. Entering the info for these pictures took a long time because I was looking up the location of every single monument/tablet and entering the coordinates in my database.
Then we visited this Smallwood state park. It's a very nice park. There was an Osprey nest with chicks that were just about ready to try flying. Every now and then they'd pop up and flap their wings. I also got some other birds, a dragonfly, some pictures of the water and marshes, and some sunset pictures. We kept ~100 of those.
Then the road trip. There are at least 1,000 pictures, and I haven't gone through them to whittle it down. We did so much - three baseball parks, two major museums, Mackinac Island and Mackinac Bridge, Lambeau Field, downtown Chicago, and Indiana Dunes State Park. Oh, and two flat tires and damage to our travel trailer from a golf cart. Quite a few of those pictures are pictures of baseball games that will be deleted (taking high frame rate pictures of the batter swinging at the pitch, and I just missed it, or the batter didn't swing, or the picture is before or after the swing). I'm not a baseball fan - I get bored, so I start taking pictures of the batters, trying to catch something interesting happening (it's hard, for so many reasons), the city skyline if possible, the ballpark itself, and other random things that catch my eye. In short, I don't yet have a good idea of how many pictures will be keepers.
Finally, the wedding last weekend. The reception was a nightmare for lighting, and I was very glad I wasn't responsible for taking pictures because I was stumped. It was very dark in the room, which isn't unusual, but the ceiling was clear glass (and at night), so the traditional bounce flash methods didn't work. The pros had two flashes - one on the camera facing away from the subject, and a remotely triggered flash that the assistant was aiming at the back of the subjects, toward the camera. I'm curious to see how their pictures came out with the remote flash. For my pictures, even auto mode wasn't working because it was setting the shutter speed at 1/60 (to match the flash) and people were dancing and moving, so they'd be blurry. I aimed my flash at the subjects and went to S mode, to set a faster shutter speed, with a relatively high ISO, figuring a grainy picture was better than no picture...I was really struggling. Nothing seemed to be working reliably. I haven't had the chance to glance through these, but I don't think I'll be holding any up as my best work. I think I got a few good ones, but...yeesh.
Last night I finished entering the info about the Gettysburg and Smallwood State Park pictures (subject, rating, category, etc.). Next step...doing an initial pass through the ~1,000 road trip pictures, then editing the keepers.
Am I the only one that gets into these situations where I'm so far behind that it feels like it'll take months to catch up? Part of my problem is that I take pictures of anything that stays still long enough (and some things that don't). Everything is interesting.
At Gettysburg, my wife decided we needed pictures of every monument/tablet/marker we saw. For the uninitiated, there are something like 850 monuments and tablets there (fortunately, we didn't see all of them!). She also started taking pictures of the individual company markers which aren't included in that 850 - for example, a (and please excuse me for screwing up the military terms) unit might have three or six companies, so there will be the main monument to the unit, then sometimes there will be three to six more markers for the individual companies. (The company markers are relatively rare, fortunately, other than those along the Union line.) We took over 300 pictures, most of which we kept. Entering the info for these pictures took a long time because I was looking up the location of every single monument/tablet and entering the coordinates in my database.
Then we visited this Smallwood state park. It's a very nice park. There was an Osprey nest with chicks that were just about ready to try flying. Every now and then they'd pop up and flap their wings. I also got some other birds, a dragonfly, some pictures of the water and marshes, and some sunset pictures. We kept ~100 of those.
Then the road trip. There are at least 1,000 pictures, and I haven't gone through them to whittle it down. We did so much - three baseball parks, two major museums, Mackinac Island and Mackinac Bridge, Lambeau Field, downtown Chicago, and Indiana Dunes State Park. Oh, and two flat tires and damage to our travel trailer from a golf cart. Quite a few of those pictures are pictures of baseball games that will be deleted (taking high frame rate pictures of the batter swinging at the pitch, and I just missed it, or the batter didn't swing, or the picture is before or after the swing). I'm not a baseball fan - I get bored, so I start taking pictures of the batters, trying to catch something interesting happening (it's hard, for so many reasons), the city skyline if possible, the ballpark itself, and other random things that catch my eye. In short, I don't yet have a good idea of how many pictures will be keepers.
Finally, the wedding last weekend. The reception was a nightmare for lighting, and I was very glad I wasn't responsible for taking pictures because I was stumped. It was very dark in the room, which isn't unusual, but the ceiling was clear glass (and at night), so the traditional bounce flash methods didn't work. The pros had two flashes - one on the camera facing away from the subject, and a remotely triggered flash that the assistant was aiming at the back of the subjects, toward the camera. I'm curious to see how their pictures came out with the remote flash. For my pictures, even auto mode wasn't working because it was setting the shutter speed at 1/60 (to match the flash) and people were dancing and moving, so they'd be blurry. I aimed my flash at the subjects and went to S mode, to set a faster shutter speed, with a relatively high ISO, figuring a grainy picture was better than no picture...I was really struggling. Nothing seemed to be working reliably. I haven't had the chance to glance through these, but I don't think I'll be holding any up as my best work. I think I got a few good ones, but...yeesh.
Last night I finished entering the info about the Gettysburg and Smallwood State Park pictures (subject, rating, category, etc.). Next step...doing an initial pass through the ~1,000 road trip pictures, then editing the keepers.
Am I the only one that gets into these situations where I'm so far behind that it feels like it'll take months to catch up? Part of my problem is that I take pictures of anything that stays still long enough (and some things that don't). Everything is interesting.