Too Many Pictures

Is there such a thing as too many pictures? I received an email last night from one of the intrepid travelers in our group that bewailed "I HAVE TOO MANY PICTURES!" On the last trip I captured about 5000 images. While some of them are good, some are horrible. To that end, I've developed a picture processing model, that seems to be working, but it slow slog.

I've downloaded all of my pictures and placed them into folders according to subject area, so all the Phillae pictures are in one folder, as are all the Dendera photos, etc. These are the "raw" photos. On my desktop I've created another folder called "Keepers." Each day I open only one "raw" folder, and no more. (More than that and I get punchy...and at the rate I'm going, the pictures will be processed in about 15 days.) As I look at the folder of pictures for one location only, I screen each picture and make a decision to move it into the "Keeper" folder or leave it in the "raw" folder. Only the pictures that look "really good" or have potential to look really good go into the "keeper" folder. Generally this process winnows down the number of photos to process from 200 to 30. Now all I have to process are the best photos and not all the photos. Next, I fire up Photoshop and start the enhancement process. Once the "keeper" folder is finished, I winnow again and put online the best of the best. The hardest part is stopping at one folder. I know that after awhile, I lose my edge and my eye, but when I'm on a "roll" it's seems a shame to stop...but I stop anyway.

After going through this process for the past week, I'm pleased with the results. It's not too overwhelming, and it has not beccome tedious yet.

When I take a computer on trips, it's always easier to do this process on a daily basis. To that end, last week I purchased a mini-laptop, that weighs in at 2 pounds and is a fully functional, albeit small, computer. With it, I will be able to download my photos on a daily basis and process them along the way, which is so much better than trying to remember all the details days, weeks or months after the event!

At the end of the "Picture Rainbow" I have created several products to show folks. I have two online galleries, a photo gallery on my iTouch, and a couple of PowerPoint albums of my trips which I print out and show folks IF they are interested. I've discovered most folks are mildly interested in MY vacation, so the PowerPoint albums show the best of the best and are never more than 70 pictures. One album shows highlights of places we've been to on that trip. The other album is an "ABC book" where I've selected photos for each letter of the alphabet. For the last trip, a is for Abu Simbel, b is for Ballooning over the Nile, C is for Cairo, etc. I have one picture of a small grouping of pictures for each letter of the alphabet. This way I have an album of 26 slides the tease folks with my memories of the adventure.

You might ask if this is enough and the answer is YES! Pictures are private pieces of art and adventure that only make sense to the people who had that particular adventure. I get the enjoyment of creatively working with the pictures. I post pictures to my online galleries, to my iTouch, and I get to create the albums. When friends ask to see my pictures I show them the abridged versions of my trips, and they do not have to see all 5000 images that I collected, they get to see the 60 or so that are wonderful.

I have one small regret. I have not found a place on the web where I can download my PowerPoint albums. Does anyone know of such a place? If you do, please let me know of it.