Learning can come from a wide range of sources, and for me there were some lessons this morning after deleting 1049 files.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

It was an interesting experience to go through some old files from a couple of years ago. These were some bird images that I had captured at LaSalle Park but I had forgotten (avoided?) to review them and to do any post processing.

As soon as I opened up the folders and had a quick look at the disasters in front of me, I was going to delete all of the photographs and not waste my time going through them. I don’t know where my head was on the two days when I created these images… but my brain was clearly not engaged with the task at hand.

As I was about to delete all of the photographs in the folders, an old saying popped into my brain. “Anything worth doing… is worth doing poorly for a period of time.” So, I changed my mind and went through all of the old photographs. It was instructive to identify the litany of mistakes that I had made.

Photographing birds-in-flight that were too far away to be usable. Forgetting to use exposure compensation when needed. Missing entire AF-C runs because of bad focus acquisition. Capturing images of birds flying at inappropriate angles. Trying to photograph clusters of flying birds that created little more than visual confusion. Not framing subjects properly when panning with birds-in-flight. Failing to match up suitable subject matter with the poor lighting conditions. My errors were obvious and glaring. All I could do was laugh at myself and the photographic disasters that I had created.

I don’t remember ever taking this many bad photographs in a row. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t looked at these file folders for a couple of years. 🙂

When all was said and done I ended up keeping 6 photographs and deleting 1049 files. No doubt this was a record-setting failure rate. There were two benefits from the experience. One was freeing up some much needed hard drive space. 🙂

The other benefit was accepting and appreciating that we all have times when we simply screw up with what we’re doing. Its not important that we mess up big time on occasion. What’s important is learning from our mistakes. Even when they end up with us deleting 1049 files.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured hand-held using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from RAW files using my standard process.

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