There is something appealing about the beginning of a brand new year. It’s something of an illusion since the calendar is somewhat arbitrary and it doesn’t match up well with the beginning or ending of any of the seasons, but there is still something about the psychology of a fresh start that captures the imagination. This year is also a “big” one for me because I will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Speaking of Nature in May. So, despite the possibly silliness of New Year’s observances, I’m actually kind of excited about this one.
First, a little housekeeping. On Dec. 29 I finally managed to hit the 21,000 mark for photos in 2021. This should have been a relatively easy thing to do, considering that I had hit the 20,000 photo mark back in September, but it still took me almost three months to add an additional thousand to the year’s count. Photo 21,000 (henceforth 21K) is a beautiful landscape shot of the meadow behind my house covered in a fresh blanket of snow. It wasn’t a lot of snow, but it fell at the right temperature to allow it to stick to everything and create a beautiful “Winter Wonderland” effect.
I was very pleased when I looked at 21K and when I went up to my office to plug my camera into my computer I was hit with a slightly bitter dose of reality. Taking 21,000 photos is fun, but doing the paperwork for that many photos is not. It requires a lot of time, attention and discipline because no one else on planet Earth is going to expect me to do it. However, if I don’t get that boring, tedious work done I will be the only one on planet Earth to suffer.
I’ve been taking photographs for the newspaper for 23 years. When I started there was no such thing as a digital camera and I picked up a Nikon 6006 at Ritz Camera because my editor at the paper said that photos might be a nice addition to my column. I learned the basics about photographic film while trying to capture nice photos of birds with some basic entry-level equipment and I spent a lot of time at one-hour photo joints anxiously waiting to see if any of my photos “came out.”
As my skills improved I made the transition to slide film and I upgraded my equipment. A new camera body and a couple new lenses allowed for much higher quality, but it was the slide film that really made my photos “pop.” Fuji (a major film manufacturer) had a slide film called “Velvia,” which had an ISO rating of 50. This meant that it had a relatively low sensitivity to light, but it also had an exceptionally fine grain that provided crisp lines and vibrant colors. The only drawback was the developing time. I had to sent rolls of film out in the mail and then wait for the slides to come back days later.
Keeping track of all of the photos I had taken required a database and some organization. What kind of film had I used? Which camera had I used? Which frame on which roll contained the photo I wanted? It involved a lot of work because each photograph was an actual physical object. The only thing that made it manageable for me was the fact that I was taking photos in relatively small numbers. To physically write on each photograph and then store it in a folder, or a box was time intensive, but I wasn’t taking a thousand photos in a day and a lot of the photos I took were not worth recording.
In 2008 the writing on the wall was pretty clear: film was dead and digital was king. I was late in joining the digital world, but once I found myself having difficulty purchasing regular film in stores I really had no choice. The change in format also required a change in my record keeping. There were no more physical rolls of film, nor were there physical photos or slides that needed to be stored anywhere. This cut down on processing time, but the sheer number of photos increased so much that the general workload increased as well.
Now I sit at my desk and I see that I have a “pile” of unprocessed photos stretching all the way back to July. Each one needs an entry in my database that will provide information on who, what, where, when and how. I had a lot of fun taking these pictures, but now I have to do all of the “winter work,” which is what I call office work and this is going to require me to put down my cell phone and stop wasting time. Does that sound familiar to anyone?
So here is my resolution for 2022: I won’t let the paperwork pile up. I will make sure that I process my photos in a timely fashion, which will allow me to keep my website up to date and that nagging little voice in my head quieter than it has been. Like many resolutions this sounds really simple, but if I actually do it I will benefit greatly. Now let’s see if I can follow through…
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 24 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy and the Massachusetts State Parks and he currently teaches high school biology and physics. For more in formation visit his website at www.speakingofnature.com, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.