Bob Crum

Last week I opined that resolutions are merely wispy wishes made emotionally after a few strawberry margaritas. I stand by that!

How about goals? Nah. A goal needs an objective that is measurable and needs to be achievable by a hard date... i.e. deadline. So goals are seldom met and equally frivolous, IMO.

Suppose I had a goal of winning the Power Ball jackpot by December 31, 2017. Disregarding the staggering odds, I diligently played the game by buying tickets every week. Nevertheless, I did not achieve the goal. Depressing.

An alternative? Intentions. They don't need a hard date thus winning or losing is irrelevant. For example, I “intend” to win the Power Ball jackpot because I buy a ticket every week. If I win, great. If not, c'est la vie. The beauty of “intentions” is that they are lossless and perpetual.

When I began digital photography, Madame Digital seduced me. Crappy film photos meant wasted money. Crappy digital images could be deleted at no cost. So why not shoot 1000 photos a day if desired? I sometimes did but not without a cost as you'll see.

I began digital photography with trepidation because of costs. I have to produce high resolutions images for both clients and prints. Thus, I record RAW images which are large files. This required a beefy computer & image processing software.
No sooner had I bought my first digital camera, I went berserk photoing. And photoing. And photoing. I now have a gazillion photos stored!

After a shoot and downloading the photos to the computer, I first rate them. All #4-rated images get post processed for client or prints. Afterward, I back up “all” photos on two external hard drives. The result: Eighteen 3.5” 2TB (terabyte) hard drives and six 2.5” 1TB hard drives full of archived images. Remember... a gazillion photos!!

In a perfect world, I would have had time to go back and delete all those that were not rated which is the majority. However, because I'm constantly shooting assignments or for pleasure, or partying with mermaids, I seldom have time to delete unrated images. Besides, it's painful to “delete” anything so I don't. After all, I might one day “need” that image. Ha! That seldom happened in a decade so I could delete all the marginal images and probably not miss them.

Wait! I needed an image for Photo of the Week so I went to the archives (hard drive #12) and found an unrated photo of a seagull napping. I love it! I post processed it and here it is! A terrible mistake had I deleted it. See my dilemma? Nevertheless, too many photos are archived.

So, here in 2018 I “intend” to make an earnest effort to purge each hard drive of questionable images. But will I have time to review a gazillion images? Why bother? Hard drives are relatively inexpensive. So it's easy to rationalize that my time is far more valuable than the cost of hard drives. Thus it's now my intention to reconsider the other intention. I adore intentions!

Hopefully my missteps will serve as a lesson about what NOT to do as you embark on your new path of digital photography. Actually two lessons. Note that photos of a lifetime are priceless so back them up on two hard drives. One copy is not backing up. Furthermore, from the get-go initiate a routine of deleting obviously crappy photos before backing up the photos to archive. Just sayin'.

Happy photoing!

Send your comments, questions or suggestions to bob@fillmoregazette.com