Month: November 2012

I’ve fallen behind

and I can’t get caught up.

I am having a hard time balancing my compulsions lately. About the only thing I’ve managed to do regularly is to get to the Y and exercise for an hour or two each day so at least I don’t sacrifice my health to my other obsessions. You need to be healthy if you’re going to try to clean up past mistakes.

My main obsession, as I mention recently, is trying to clear out old photos that are filling up nearly two very large hard drives. I don’t even want to think about how many CD’s full of even older shots I might have waiting on the shelf. And we won’t even mention all the old slides that really should be converted to digital copies so that they don’t get thrown out when no one has slide projectors around to show them.

Conservatively, I’ve been locating and deleting nearly a thousand photos a day. Before I can delete many of them, I need to find them on backup hard drives because they have become disconnected from Aperture over time. Many of them became disconnected when I had to buy a larger hard drive to back them up. If I just delete them from Aperture without first locating them, they never actually get deleted from the hard drive, and that certainly defeats the purpose of what I’m doing.

So far I’m just tackling the easy part, deleting photos that aren’t as good as photos taken the same day or photos of subjects that I know in my head that I have better shots, common birds like Great Blue Herons, American Bitterns, Kingfishers, favorites that I can easily remember.

It will take me probably another 40+ hours just to finish this phase of the job. The harder job will be identifying all the photos so that I can then eliminate all but the very best of the shots, and the ones that have personal value because they remind me vividly of particular experiences.

It’s hard to remember that this is merely an extension of another job I started recently, trying to clean out my office so that I can paint, lay a new floor, and move the furniture around so that I can spend more time doing artwork.

Luckily it’s winter and I don’t have any plans to go anywhere until spring. We’ve descended into the winter rains here, and it’s supposed to get even worse in the near future. So, maybe I will be able to get back to reading and writing sooner rather than later.

Of course, I suspect I originally started this cleanup to avoid writing about Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. I have given both a lot of thought, though, and I’m not willing to throw them out until I have finally written something about them.

A Day in Port Townsend

I was shocked to realize it has been five months since Leslie and I had been to Port Townsend. So with a break in the weather this weekend, we decided it was time to go back. If I hadn’t had computer memory arriving Friday, we would have spent both Friday and Saturday there. Instead, we got up around 5:30 AM and headed out for breakfast at the Sweet Laurette Cafe & Bistro. It was a great breakfast, and we spent the morning visiting art shops, even though I was unable to indulge myself because I’d already spent too much updating my computer this month.

It felt strange driving back to Ft Flagler after visiting Port Townsend since we had always visited Ft Flagler first in the past. I wondered if the birds I usually see in the morning would be there in the afternoon. As it turned out birding was pretty awful, but it might have been because of the tide, and the winds, not the time of day.

The most spectacular “birds” we saw on our trip were actually humans riding the high winds on their parafoils.

parafoil

The real birds, though, were huddled on the south side of the jetty, forced up onto the grass fields because there was virtually no shoreline.

plover on grass field

I’ve always seen plovers on the shore before, certainly never foraging on grass fields.

The Harlequin Ducks were in the same place, hunkered up next to the shore avoiding the high winds.

three Harlequin Ducks

Unfortunately, by that time of the day the light was directly behind them and their beautiful colors were muddied, at best.

In fact, the only shot I got with good lighting was this shot of Pelagic Cormorants posed on the old pier posts.

Pelagic Cormorants

Usually they seem to be black, but seen in just the right light their iridescent green feathers seem quite beautiful.

Birding Waughop and Titlow

Having finished my gardening chores the day before, I couldn’t resist going out birding again on Wednesday, this time to Waughop Lake and Titlow. Unfortunately, the highlight of the day was the sunshine and an opportunity to talk to a photographer I’d not met before.

Waughop was particularly dead, with a few American Coots and Mallards hanging around the edge of the pond and a raft of Northern Shovelers

pair of Norhern Shovelers

floating in the middle of the lake along with some Ring-Necked Ducks too far out to get a shot even with a 560mm telephoto.

Birding was a bit better at Titlow where I noted the return of the Widgeons like this female.

female Widgeon

The highlight of the day, bird-wise, though would have to be a pair of Hooded Mergansers. I’m not sure if this guy was drying out after preening or displaying his manhood,

Hooded Merganser

but I appreciated the chance to get something other than another shot of a duck just floating.

Hooded Merganser

The real entertainment of the day, though, was watching this Merganser try to slink away with this rather large fish which was obviously far too big to swallow but he didn’t want to share.

Hooded Merganser with fish

Photographically it was a wasted day. I’ve been trying to sort through the thousands of shots residing on my hard drive(s), deleting shot after shot that’s not as good as other shots for weeks now. At times it seems like a never-ending job, like cleaning a house or cooking a meal, but it did make me resolve to immediately sort through every future shoot, deleting those that aren’t as good as previous shots of the same birds. I deleted every shot taken during the day even these after I’d posted them to my blog.

It’s Great to Be Back Home

I was greeted by lightning and rain the night I returned from my Colorado trip, and it seems like it has rained ever since. So when forecasters predicted sunshine Monday, I got out of the house quickly so I wouldn’t miss it.

The last time I was at Theler Wetlands four weeks ago the pond was more mud then pond. It was a very different pond Monday. Accompanied by one of the highest tides I’ve seen, the pond was overflowing and the mud marshes were totally submerged.

Predictably, the promised sunshine never came. In fact, it was downright misty. As a result most of the photos are not as sharp as I aim for, but this is exactly the weather I expect in November. I kind of like the soft-focus shots I got, except for those that turned out so blurry trashed them.

There’s certainly nothing special about Mallards around here, either, but they were a welcome sight

Mallards in the fog

as was this Great Blue Heron who appeared to have stood at his post the whole time I was gallivanting around the country.

Great Blue Heron

The highlight of the day,though, was this Northern Shrike,

Northern Shrike

the first I have ever seen at Theler Wetlands in the six or so years I’ve visited. It fit in beautifully with the grey skies; I doubt I would have noticed it if the other birds hadn’t been excitedly sending out warning signals. It’s sometimes known as the “butcher bird” despite it’s passerine exterior.

Sunshine or no sunshine, it’s great to be back home.