Starlings and Forgotten Pictures in a Digital age
They're beautiful birds aren't they? We took that shot last year using the NovaBird camera. I just stumbled upon it while wandering through our private photo collection. And therein lies the rub.
The problem, simply put, is that digital cameras make possible huge numbers of files. And no matter the method of organization, a huge number is still a huge number. The eBirdseed.com photo library (see link below) holds around 2,000 pics, and the machine I'm working on right now is home to a mind-numbing 3,500 shots. And then there are our other two computers (and the Web) which probably hold yet another 2,000 images. Given those numbers along with deleted pictures, and we're talking a count well in excess of 10,000. Bottom line? Even given a reasonable taxonomy system, one still grapples with jpegs rambling across three computers, and five Web-based file archival systems.
I guess I could make up an Excel spreadsheet that would put order to this chaos, but that would take forever and the maintenance would be a pain. (Did I link that cell to PhotoBucket? Flickr? eBirdseed.com? Movable Type? WordPress?)
When all is said and done, it's really quite ironic (and even at times serendipitous) that the extraordinary order of our new digital world ultimately leads to such unexpected disorder.
Anyway, it was fun to wander upon a forgotten but decent shot of a bunch of grackles.
See you by the feeders if I can just remember where I put them,
CapeCodAlan
eBirdseed.com photo library
