Photos for Sept

Summertime in Tennessee... fresh produce, flowers, and thunderstorms.

Yes!  They really were that big and juicy sweet too.

Deleting a Third of a Million Digital Photos

Did you know that a few days ago was "National Clean Out Your Computer Day"?

"DAY"... yeah, that one made me laugh.  I've been cleaning out my computer and external hard drive since the beginning of January.  Just in photographs I have deleted ~ brace yourself! ~ about 350,000 photos!

I've mentioned this in a few of my Facebook groups and have had many ask how did I do it?

First thing was for me to come to an understanding of just how that mind blowing number came to be.  The answer: laziness.

Remember the old days (and some of you probably don't...) when you loaded film into your camera?  You might have 12 shots you could take, or maybe 24.  The very most was 36 and that was almost decadent.  Then you very carefully selected what you wanted a photo of and very carefully took one...maybe two shots because that film was not cheap!  When you took all the photos for that roll of film, the next step was to take it to be processed.  More not cheap.

Picking up your photos was always a butterflies in the stomach time.  How many turned out OK?

Digital photography.  If you feel it, you can take 1000 photos of your kid's soccer game.

Here is where the problem arises.

I didn't have 350,000 photos to delete because I've taken a half million photos.  I had that many because of lazy back-ups to my external hard drive.  I'd just keep backing up and backing up and backing up the same darn thing with only a few new ones each time.  And I never went thru those photos I had taken to pick the best 2 or 3 from the 200 or 300 shots I'd taken at that soccer game.  Ditto the trip to the park.  Ditto again the birthday party.  See the problem?

And trips... oh goodness.  My 30 day trip to Scotland produced 9000 photos.  Now it gets really sticky because 8000 of them were good photos of amazing places.

Folks... I travel a lot...

So it goes until I was completely overwhelmed with where to start.  Here is how I accomplished my sorting and culling...

I started with just looking at what sort of things I take photos of.  What are my main topics/themes?  These I wrote on paper first.

Yearly is a no brainer.  Sub files of each year (ie 2011), then sub file that with the months.  That to me is the most basic organization.  

The next major file for me was Travel.  Sub files Overseas or US trips.  Within those sub files for locations.

After that I just came up with various topics that I do... "Family and History", "Creative", "Blog", "Photography" (those shots I want to use for selling/contests/etc), "Home", and so on.  You can always add more as you work~ these first one just help make for faster sorting.  

Now I was ready for the big sort-cull-organize to begin.  I started with my external hard drive.  I had done save after save of the same files, so I picked the largest and latest folder to drag the duplicates into.  "Merge" and "Move and Replace" are wonderful time savers.

I kept busy at that until I had one large folder of unique files.  

Then I copied over laptop drive files using the same method.  This way I ended up with files on the external drive of every single photo.  Oh... I added Dec 17 to the end of every file name (cause I started this the beginning of Jan).  An incredible amount of photos were deleted during this time as I ditched the duplicates or sub-files I knew I didn't want to keep.

Now back to the laptop drive...

First folder I made was 000 Hold (those are zeros).  So named so it would always be at the top.  Due to extreme paranoia, I dragged all the photo files into this folder for safe keeping ~ even tho technically I also had them on my external drive.  Don't know if that was needed but it made me feel better!

So at this point, I had one folder showing in my file tree.  

Then I added in all the new files I had brainstormed earlier.  

At this point I dragged over one folder at a time from the external drive... adding 00 to the front of the file name to put it on top.

I worked on that file one photo at a time, until each photo and sub file was completely culled to just what I wanted to keep.  The finished files were dragged into the new blank files.  

Once the transferred file is empty, I deleted it.

I did this over and over for several weeks until I had gone thru all the photos I was going to.  As I finished each yearly folder I renamed it with DONE at the end of the name.

OK, that sounds a bit strange when I say I'm done culling my photos.  Except for the travel photos, (which I am working thru month by month making photo books out of after which I will do the cull), the important photos are done (ie yearly, family history, etc).  

I discovered as I worked there are photo files I really don't consider important such as "projects" (photos grabbed from the 'net that I want to do) and I don't care about backing them up per se.  Maybe later but probably not.  I can always go to Pinterest.

My final steps were to copy back to the external drive all my finished files or untouched consolidated files (like "Travel") that now had the name ending Feb 18.  The files named with Dec 17 on the end were deleted.  One last check to make sure I had all files in both drives, and the final copies were deleted.

Was it fun?  No.  Was it easy?  Oh no.  Was it needed?  Absolutely yes!

I worked on this almost every day for 1 to 4 hours a day.  When I was tired of it, I walked away because that is when you start making stupid mistakes.  But when I started this I pledged to myself I would complete the task, which I did.  It might have taken less time to do if I hadn't been simultaneously going thru those 8000 Scotland photographs for my Blurb book of the trip.

If I could go thru that many photos and get them arranged, so can you!

And The Sun Disappeared

Were you in the path of the eclipse... or travel to see it?

I was amazed and dubious at all the tourist predictions that were being touted for both Clarksville, TN (population about 150, 00 with a predicted 500,00 tourist) and my hometown in MO (population about 6200 with a predicted 90,000 tourist) which happened to be almost dead center.

Seriously??

A local highway sign.

In "the swath" residents were told to get their groceries early and STAY OFF THE ROADS on Monday.  You'd thought we were going to have an ice storm.  No... they are calmer for an ice storm.  

Driving past Clarksville hotels on Sunday night, the parking lots were mostly full.  But not completely full.  

The next morning I pulled up the C'ville street department traffic camera that are installed at major intersections.  Expecting to see the predicted bumper-to-bumper traffic I was surprised to see it was quieter than a Sunday morning.  So much for hoards of tourists.  Same with my home town in MO.

We were comfortably at home, sitting out on our deck.

Unfortunately, a bunch of drunken red-necks decided to park their boats right below our house.  They were wasted.  About halfway thru totality, as they partied hardy - one of them yelled "HEY!!  The sun is gone!!!"

Really??

I was extremely scientific in my eclipse photography... I held my viewing glasses over my camera lens!  It worked great.

Next time I'll have a better set up tho (next time being April 2024 in the SE Missouri area).

Moments before totality!

I love this photo!!

Beautiful corona and 'Bailey's Beads'.

And yes, the stars did come out.  (Actually, I think that was Jupiter...)

And with this ring... it was over.

Incredible.

As it disappeared Himself fixed up a viewing for us using his binoculars turned backwards.  WAY better than the pinhole cereal box.

See that dip?  That is the temperature drop during totality.

I didn't see or hear any odd animal behavior, except the katydids starting to chirp.  They quit when the sun came back out.  Otherwise birds continued to sing and the cicada kept trilling.  No dogs howled (and there are a lot around here).

Oh... wait... the red-necks did get quiet...

First Place Surprise!

The end of January I saw the announcement for this photography contest... with the deadline being the very next day!

So I pulled "Waiting On The Tin Man" off the wall since I didn't have time to mess with printing and framing anything else.

Since it was a juried show, entering didn't mean it would be accepted.  The judges decide if it meets the criteria for acceptance and if it does, THEN it is hung in the show.

Himself and I went to the opening reception.  It was a packed house!  After I finally found the Still Life group I was happy to see it was indeed hanging!  I made the show!  Happy with that we headed on home.

Next morning I was looking over the Facebook page to see who entered and who won.

OH. My. Goodness!!!!!  First Place?  I won 1st place?

I let out a squeal that brought Himself running in.

Why didn't anyone say anything??  Why wasn't there a ribbon hanging??

The next day we were back to see.  There's still no ribbon hanging (but a lot of winners had no ribbons and one photo had its ribbon and someone else's...).

As you can imagine... I'm floating!

Clan Hanna Photos at the Farmer's Market

I've mentioned my photography club a few times; one of our activities is having a booth at the Downtown Farmer's Market in Clarksville every Saturday May through mid October.  Members who wish to set up their photos for sell and chat to those passing by about the club.

Labor Day Saturday was my turn...

I had been back from Minnesota for only two day, so it was a scramble to get ready.  I did a lot of fast matting so I'd have a variety available.

And here we are all set up.  It was a perfect day to be there.

My display.

Pretty good choices.

Since Himself was there to help, we could take turns looking around.  It was nice not to have to stay in one place all morning.

And being there early meant we definitely beat the crowds.

We didn't get any 'things' from the other vendors but we sure had fun with munchies!  LOL  Besides our lunch from a Mexican food truck we also had fresh baked tomato & basil scones, fruit hand pies, and Amish home-made ice cream.  

Plus I moved a few photos.

It was a fun morning.  I'm looking forward to next season when I'll be better prepared.

Downtown Clarksville

Crazy busy right now catching up on a dozen things.  I'll be back in a few days when I have time to catch my breath.  Been doing all sorts of things the last few weeks, so there's a lot to share!

Stay cool!

Friends of Photography Show

As I said in May, I'm working on bringing my photography ventures up to the next level.  My photography club is the featured 'artist' at a local business that works with artists in this area.

I brought in four photos for the exhibit.

The bluebird is mine.  My other two photos were hanging in a high traffic area so I didn't get a shot of them.

This is a good start...

Lush

"Lush"

Taken in Nashville, TN at the garden of a friend.

If nothing else, the heat and humidity of Tennessee makes for beautiful greenery.

Diving Back In To Photography

Did you know that May is National Photography Month?

Very appropriate for me, as I have just returned as a member to the photography club I used to be in.  I left Friends of Photography a couple years after we moved out to The Sticks.  I was just so busy and something had to give for a while.  I'm excited to be back and it looks like it is going to be a busy fun ride!  There is a monthly inter-club photo contest, a sales venue all summer at the bustling weekend Farmer's Market, and a club show in June at Silkie's restaurant, one of the local artsy places.

Not that I've put my camera down during my hiatus from the group...

I've continued to add to my portfolio...

I've been entering contests with good results...

And I even had a private show during one of the downtown 'Art Walk Thursdays'.

But with all that, I'm so looking forward to get back into my group.  There's something special about being with people who enjoy the same things you do.

"Lessons from The Quilt" by Bev Blackard... and illustrated by ME!

I can finally talk about a project that I worked on at the beginning of the year.  My friend Bev (aka Mama Nick) has published a Christian inspirational book and she asked me to do the photography for it.  "Lessons from The Quilt" is a delightful book that would be enjoyed so much by quilters, as well as those who like gentle inspirational stories.

The publishing company used a tight close up of her quilt for the cover.

A little bit about the book and Bev...

I think it is a lovely idea for a priceless heirloom.

Bev shares her thoughts as she went through the creative process of designing her heirloom.

And also her thoughts about the Lord and how He is so like a quilter as He shapes and designs our lives.

Not only did I do the photography of Bev's items, many of my personal photos are used to illustrate the text.  SO cool to see them in a book!

It can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, or you can do a Google search to make an order.