Someone ... please put me out of my misery ...

In my folders of photographs, I have a folder labeled: "Favourites". It has a few sub-folders in it - and they all basically contain just what it says - my favorite photos.

Here is a representative sampling of what is inside those folders. You might notice something:

Notice anything yet?

Now ... anything?

Yes? No?

We moved to Norway on July 4th, 2004. I was not a photographer. Gary was a photographer - he always had the camera and that was the way it was, I seemed to have no interest in it whatsoever.

But ... Norway has a way about it it. It is absolutely stinking sickeningly beautiful. EVERYWHERE. No matter where you looked there were picturesque scenes of waterfalls, or meadows with matching houses in red, yellow or white (I believe there was a law ... seriously - everything MATCHED). So it would have been rather odd had I not picked up a camera - I mean - YOU COULDN'T LOSE! Point your camera anywhere, click! And a beautiful photo was created.

So ... sometime in 2005 I picked up a camera. I believe I got my large Canon for Christmas of 2005 - until then it was Gary hand-me-downs. And soon I discovered that I LOVED photography and it slowly became my passion.

What does this have to do with the photos up there? Nothing ... just making a point that I have not been taking photos for a very long time - just 5 years or so.

And those photos up there? They are ALL from when we lived in Norway. I compiled the Favourites folder right when we came back or right before we left. We left Norway to move home in July of 2006. So one'ish year out of five'ish years of photo taking.

That leaves an awfully big gap, folks.

Last night I pulled in my December photos into Lightroom and tagged them all - wondering - yet again - how crazy I had to have been to tag all my photos at once (You remember that four day, no sleep episode, don't you?) when tagging just one month is so tedious. And a thought crept in and curdled my brain.

In the past month, there have been quite a few times that I have needed to peruse my best photos - or better looking photos - ie to make a calendar and for some other projects and it was cumbersome at best. My photos are neatly relegated to folders by year, then month, then week - and if it is a trip or a big week, by day. So, if I remember a photo and can roughly remember the time frame - I can find it. But just a folder full of my favorites? All I have is Norway / Europe.

WELL, Lightroom has these nifty things - a 5 star rating system plus a color coding system - and, of course, you can sort, select, pretty much do anything using them.

BUT - your photos have to be starred or color coded.




Yeah.





I know!




Can I really be this stupid? I have exactly 63,777 photos in Lightroom as I type this. I have to say - on some of my all time favorites, I did give them 5 stars and for some reason there were a bunch of spurious 5 star photos in Lightroom that I noticed yesterday and got rid of, but it was, maybe 10 photos total - I think I need to be less discriminating ...


But,



seriously? SIXTY THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SEVEN photos!








Please come over to my house and shoot me.







I'm currently in my Melbourne trip (March 2010 - I am going backwards) trying to decide what cute koalas in the wild will be 5 stars and which won't make the cut ....

Please ....






kill me now ....