Sunday, March 13, 2016

Building My Nature Photography Archive

My new landing page at tomarbour.smugmug.com features every bird photography, nearly 500 images.

At the beginning of the year, I came to this realization that the body of my work was sitting on my hard drive, very difficult to access.  Yes, this blog is a record of my natural history activities since the mid-2000's, but it's sequential- not well organized by taxa, or natural history subject, for example.

And after nature blogging began its big decline starting around 2010, most of us turned to Facebook to share our natural history images.  While some photographers curate their own wonderfully organized galleries, most imagery on Facebook is ephemeral.  Social media good way to give a dose of "nature porn" to our friends, but it's quite horrible to serve us, each of us as nature photographers, as a place to catalog and archive our body of work. Which, in order to become better photographers, more complete photographers, we need this.  At least, I came to the revelation a few months ago that I need it.

I need a place that is my own.  That I can display my work.  A place to help me better focus my field efforts, so that I'm bringing home photos of things that I haven't photographed particularly well before.  A place that I can catalog the wide range of nature subjects I choose to photograph.  A place where photos won't get buried over the years. A place where the photograph itself takes precedence. A place that I own, that I can design, and call my own.

While I never would have guessed just how much time it would take to complete such a site, I also underestimated the end value that this effort would have.  Take my bird photography gallery, which is now complete.  Who knew that I have never photographed a hairy woodpecker?  Or have any decent imagery of other common birds, including the northern flicker, indigo bunting, and red-tailed hawk?

I have a long way to go, but I know that my photography will improve for it.  I encourage you to visit tomarbour.smugmug.com and take a look.

-Tom

Sunday, March 06, 2016

We Made it Through the Birthdays

We've made it through a busy stretch of the year we like to call "the birthdays". It all begins February 16, where I add one more year to my age, along with my mom. Then on the 25th comes Brody, who turned five this year. Isn't that crazy? And this year, being a leap year, we had one extra day between the boys birthdays, as Weston turned seven on March 2. Needless to say Megan did a great job managing all the planning that comes along with this many birthdays in that short of time.

Our Worthington Kroger Mall has a pastry chef.  Everything was edible.  Fondant and all.  


We had the boys friends' party at the Central Ohio Fire Museum.  It was awesome. 




And we finished it all up with Weston's birthday this past week.  Another cake from our Worthington Kroger, once again covered in fondant.  The boys finished up the last pieces this evening.


And that wraps up our two plus weeks of birthdays.  We're a little older, a little wiser, and a whole lot sillier, judging by this evening's dinner conversation.  

-Tom