Hadn’t planned on birding today, but the light was hitting the water fountain perfectly this morning and stopped me in my tracks. That lead to many great discoveries of the day. First, noticed this Cooper’s hawk in the tree. I phished at him so he’d look at me. And glare he did. Then walking back the Hermit Thrush appeared for a drink. First time I’ve ever had one in the garden.
Then some more lovelies popped up in the garden.
So that got me started on the whole “I want to bird – forget duties” mode. After a couple of errands, I decided to try to track down some Tundra Swans that a fellow birder had reported yesterday in Arnold. Stopping in a driveway trying to figure out directions Two Flickers were chasing each other on the trees. Dancing horizontally in circles around the trunk. Have never seen such a fun and marvelous sight. And if that wasn’t enough on this quick unexpected stop, a Yellow Belly Sapsucker appeared.
So I finally found the White Swan Drive. Sitting on the ice were the Tundra’s, mallards, canvasbacks, black ducks, and Canadian Geese. Waiting and watching the swans, two immature bald eagles showed up, the then quickly left. The swans kept incoming which was fun to watch them slide on the ice upon landing.
For some other updates, I did hear the Carolina Wrens twice today, but have yet to see them. I really would like to see them to know that they are really ok.
For the infamous backup plan for all of my images. I began the upload of 40,000 + images to my new account with Just Cloud and it is working ! Working but super slow. In fact, I think it’s going to take me a full week for the uploads to complete. What’s great is that I can turn off my computer and then go back to the dialogue box to restart the upload and it picks up where it left off.
I finally realized that this “cloud” back up idea isn’t going to provide me the ability to do what I want to do. The objective was to have all of my images from the multiple places they’re currently located at onto ONE drive. Then I can go to that master file and begin the removal of duplicate and triplicate images. This way I have a library that is cleaned up.
The only way I can figure out how to make that happen is to have a very large external hard drive that can hold the huge quantity of images I have. Thus, I purchased a Toshiba Canvio Desk 3 Terabyte external hard drive. It was at a good price lower than posted retail. I plugged it in and immediately was able to use the drive without any setup.
I’ve successfully backed up my desktop images and it took about 9 hours to complete. Yes..lots of files there too.
What I learned though, in my accidentally deleting the other day – I deleted my Lightroom catalog! Talk about major Oh Oops and completely heartbreaking. Thankfully, when I did the backup last month, a backup catalog file was created also. So the damaged was controlled, and I only lost one months of Lightroom edits.
Although it is still quite painful as it includes all of those wonderful images from my field trip to Longwood Gardens.
So new notes to myself:
Back up Lightroom Catalog at least once a week.
Keep weekly backups of images captured.
When speaking with new photographers – emphasize the importance of keeping things centralized and backed up so that they don’t run into the problems I have.
Hope this gets you thinking of your file management system and make it a new year’s resolution to protect all the hard work you’ve done.
Categories: 2013 Project 365, Birds, Nature
Emily Carter ~ Nature as Art 
Love your photos – especially the Flickers. Good luck on the rest of your storage system!
The Flickers were awesome !! I’ve never seen two together, let alone with the tree dancing thing. Hope you get to see that one day. Been birding lately?
Just quick trips in and around the county. Saw a Long-Tailed duck at North Beach. Went to Ft. Smallwood to look for the Pipits on a very rainy Sunday. Lol. A Bald Eagle was cruising the beaches, so no Pipit sightings! One of these days, I want to make it to one of your photography workshops, by the way! Sorry I missed the one you had at Thomas Point, even if it was frigid that morning!
I’ll be at the Thomas Point walk with Dan Haas on the 18th. I believe it starts at 8:00am. That time is to be reconfirmed by him. I wanted to go and look for pipit yesterday, but remembered the park is closed on Wednesdays. Did you see the lightroom/post processing workshop I posted?
I will put the 18th on the computer. I’m looking forward to finally meeting you and Dan. Yes, I saw the post processing workshop – still thinking on that one!!
what a beautiful collection of photos!
Thank you so much Rob ! I am particularly happy with these. 🙂 Have a great day.
Loving your captures – love when the birds are staring down at you and your camera:)
Me too ! I’m starting to get a collection of “The Look” I think I might make a book of them. 🙂 Thanks Renee.
I would certainly buy the “Bird Stares” Book:)
Birds – Very good ones!
Thanks Bente ! I agree, I think some of these are my best work yet. It’s all about the light right? Well..good equipment helps too.
You always find the most amazing captures! beautiful 🙂
Thanks Andy ! Its as if nature wanted to smile on me yesterday and shared with me all of her treasures.
She sure is very kind and wow beautiful treasures 🙂
🙂
Another great set of birding images Emily. Love the Cooper’s Hawk and the images of the swans and ducks on the ice. My iMac is now quite old, so only had a 500gb hard drive and as that was filling up it was starting to affect performance. So I bought a 2tb external hard drive as my primary image storage and a 3tb as my backup storage. So far it’s working well. Of course as you shoot full frame your files will be bigger than my crop and MFT sensor images. Also I suspect you take more images than I do – as I presume you have your camera set up on continuous shot mode to capture some of your birds in flight. How is your 5dIII btw?
You’re right Mark ! I shoot RAW and tons of images. I think I came home with 500 or so yesterday. The Mark III is very sick. Just got the doctor’s bill yesterday. To the tune of about $300 to repair. Cheaper than a new one though. Ditto on the lens, it was busted up. Thank goodness it’s fixable.
Great to hear how you manage your file system. I just wish I had started when I had less images so it wouldn’t take so long.
I’m glad that you decided to go birding, the photos are fantastic! Love the glare from the hawk and the swans chattering away!
Good luck with the backup and clean up!
Thank you so much Jerry ! That hawk glare is the best ever. Completely priceless. It’s as if he was thinking “Stop that! I know you’re not a bird.”
You’re on the right track, but remember that files of any kind are not safe on a hard drive. All hard drives fail at some point (Usually at the most inconvenient point). The cloud idea is a good one, and multiple backups are critical.
Nice images.
Thanks Hugh !! I should hire you to do this job for me. 🙂 Once I get a cleaned up library, believe me, it’ll be in at least three different places.
I love those juncos: I’d never seen them before. Hope the ice melts soon so that all those magnificent birds get their food!
We also have an external hard drive for all our old pictures, as we don’t want to lose them every time we replace a laptop. Good advice.
Super group of birds there! Well done.
Thanks Phil ! Surely you get a wide variety also. Hope you’re doing well. 🙂
Excellent!
Thank you so much.