Organization

Like many people of my age, I came to digital photography late. In the absence of clear plastic sleeves for negatives and yellow-orange envelopes containing Kodak prints that just fit shoe boxes, I'm at a loss to organize my photographic images. I know in theory it ought to be easier. In practice, I use a huge memory card and accumulate thousands of images in my camera. As the need or whim strikes me, I pick off a few at time and store them in uselessly named files on my computer. Names like Camera, Paint, and Today. I still maintain the majority of the images on the memory cards, and often repeatedly transfer the same image to the computer. Additional chaotically arranged images are on a separate hard-drive. I add to this problem daily, and worry about it only occasionally.

I usually know what I'm looking for, and so far have been able to find it. Always in the last place I look. Tonight I was looking through my images for pictures of sparrows. Since I see sparrows everyday, there are lots of sparrow pictures spread around in lots of picture files. You may notice these aren't sparrows at all. I just came across these forgotten images tonight, and they pleased me. The passion flowers are still buds now, but before long these crazy blooms will be back, enchanting the bees of a new season. Maybe I'll get a new memory card.