I must have been overwhelmed when packing up the house for our multi-state move. Or maybe I just mis-read the information on the storage of our PODS to include some kind of climate control while sitting for months in Phoenix. Possibly both, overlaid with personal stupidity.
The project started much earlier, when my laptop's photo library was getting way overloaded, and my back-up system wasn't working. I like to shoot shoot shoot and look later, something formerly not economically feasible before I went digital. A single roll of pictures would cost over $10 before I saw anything, and I can shoot multiples of that in a single outing, repeat it the following day and the next, and now not spend a penny unless I want an actual hard copy of something. I can email favorite files to friends. I even figured out how to post itty bitty ones here.
My solution was to pull out the thumbnails of each topic of files onto my desktop, stacked and overlapped like crazy, deleting each one from the photos library as I went. then I'd insert a thumb drive, move each file over, save them there while deleting them from the desktop as well - yep, very labor intensive - and tape a label on the thumb drive to identify the contents. Label might include "videos", "people", one of several different state names where I shot a lot, and above all, the name of my favorite wildlife center which incidentally has an annual photo contest.
I enter that contest nearly every year. Occasionally I place, getting a "second" a couple times. Amazing considering my modest equipment and all the photographers I see along the roads with heavy duty tripods supporting 20 inch lenses. Not that I measure them, that's just an estimate. I'm sure some are longer. Once I was invited to look though one and a tiny black speck off in the distance turned into a black ibis way off its usual migration path. That kind of straying happens a lot. I'm lucky if I can get an ordinary red-winged blackbird next to the road clinging to a cattail.
I got this lucky a couple weeks ago. This fellow was puffing his distinctive wings out every time he trilled his challenge to any nearby males: this was his territory and they could go take a hike - or something even ruder in blackbird-speak. It won't be entered in the contest because the sun was at the wrong angle and the eyes don't show well. Black is tricky that way. I had to fiddle with light levels to overexpose everything just to get a hint of one eye plus an assumption of his bill. Still, it's my best of one of these guys in the years I've been there. The yellow-headed ones are much simpler to shoot, if rarer in fact.
Back to the stupidity. I filled about a dozen thumb drives with what became the only files of a whole bunch of photos. I ignored the bag they were in when I unpacked it, thinking they were as they'd been made, and set it on a shelf in my room. But this year's photos contest is under way, and I was looking through older photos. Or at least looking for them. I'm supposed to have two drives with that name on them, but found one. There was also one with people photos separated out, many from either new babies or backyard bonfires. One held videos, another National Park shots.... you get the idea.
I'd plug one in to the slot to open it, and nothing came up on my desktop to tell me there was something, anything, in the slot, much less a named thumb drive. Try another. Same. When I finally got to the drive with the pictures I wanted to look for a contest photo from, I finally got a list of file numbers, the kind that all end in jpg. I opened the first, and... 2/3 of it was a grey block. A whole bunch had varying levels of the same, others had grey or multicolor lines running horizontally through it, just enough visible to see what I had lost. Over and over. Again and again. I tried scrolling way down into the files and picked one at random. Same results.
Somehow labels have disappeared of some of the drives, or - knock on wood - when I stocked up before we moved on inexpensive blank thumb drives to spend more weeks filling, they needed a second bag which might have been stored in another location, like a camera case which made the trip in the car... in March... and didn't get fried. I have no idea where such might be, of course. But I'm hoping it's a wobbly memory and not just a fervent wish.
Meanwhile, I went back into what I did still have on my laptop. I found a great heron photo, taken from the right location, meaning one of the three properties controlled by the refuge folks. That photo reminded me of a heron video I had seen recently, though from the wrong location to enter the contest. It was from 2 years ago when I took the camera along while Steve went fishing. One heron stayed close since we were the only ones there, were staying quiet, and nobody had launched a boat yet that morning.
I'd taken several stills, like the one above (with its tongue stuck out if you look close) and then since it was earnestly watching the water directly under it and stalking, I turned on video and got it catching - and swallowing - a newly caught fish. I love that video, especially with the fish tail still wiggling out my side of the bill until the heron took a second gulp to send it down the hatch. I'd seen that recently, because I'd shown it to somebody else who thought it was disgusting!
SAY WHAT? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU ?!?
I couldn't find it. I checked around, and other still shots from that exact time are there. Same location, same heron which never came back on any of our visits. I looked for other keepers, contest entries that I didn't want to lose, and hadn't copied elsewhere. Those weren't even on my laptop, and I never erased those even when transferring a copy.
Now I have only memories of those photos, like two different babies gnawing on the visor of whichever ball cap Steve had worn and loaned to the occasion for the day. Elk lying down at the entrance station to RMNP, antlers in velvet, backlit by the rising sun, possible only because of covid and we two geezers had qualified for our first 2 shots and felt able to travel. Nobody minded the entrances, we could park on the road and capture the photos with nobody waiting and honking for us to move. Another elk walked straight in front of the car while we were stopped. I shot it too, even though the windshield turned it slightly green.
It goes on and on and on. I haven't the heart - yet - to try every one of the drives. I've been looking through what I actually still do have, since old photos still qualify if taken at the right location. The good ones still are in my memory... only. I got to the place where I couldn't bear to hunt any more. There are a few more days to get my act together and submit what I can.
What do you do with a thumb drive which won't even say "I exist"?
Besides mourn?