Nature Notes from Harold Stiver

Third Covered Bridge, Vermont

When Built: About1872

Builders: Builder Unknown

Description: The Third Covered Bridge, also known as the Upper Cox Brook Bridge is a 37 foot structure which spans that Brook. It is located on Cox Brook Road in Northfield Falls. It is part of a three bridge group  which includes Station Bridge and Second Bridge.

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This is part of a series on Vermont’s Covered Bridges. You can find an index here.

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Philippine Duck

Description:

A very elegant looking duck, long and thin bodies, with chestnut head and neck and a black eye stripe and cap. The sexes are alike.

Range:

Endemic to the Philippine Islands where it is known from about two dozen locations.

Status:

Birdlife International lists it as vulnerable because “because it has a small population which is undergoing a rapid and continuing decline owing to extensive over-hunting and widespread conversion of its wetland habitats.”

It is estimated that there are about 10,000 birds remaining in the wild.

They breed well in captivity where care should be taken to keep them from cross-breeding.

Birdlife International Citation

If you wish to know when further of the Rare and Endangered Series are posted, just Click Here.

Webster' Falls, Ontario

This is one of the most visited waterfalls in Ontario, and it’s popularity is well-deserved. It has a park area around the top which is a great place for a family picnic. There is a stairs that allows easy access to the base. You can also get a more panoramic view by walking up to the opposite bank. You can reach this area by taking Brock Rd. south off of Highway 5. Turn left onto Harvest Rd, and then right onto Short Rd, which will shortly lead you to parking for the conservation area.

Warning: It can be dangerous to view and photograph waterfalls. The footing can be wet and slippery, and an accidental fall can result in serious injury or death. Note also that many sections of waterfalls are on private property. Please respect these rights.

Go to the Index to Ontario Waterfalls

If you would like to be informed of future Ontario Waterfall posts, Click Here.

Louth Falls, Ontario

Although it is not particularly well known, the Louth Falls in Ontario is a gem situated in light woodlands, and one of my favorites.

You reach it by taking Jordan Rd. south off of the QEW Niagara, till you reach the end. Turn left on Highway 81 and then right on 17th St. Turn left on Staff Ave, and look for a parking lot on your left. The trail is part of the Bruce Trail, and a short distance from the parking kot, it starts down a hill, look for a trail to the left part way down which leads to the falls.

This is a good place to work the stream area for photographs.

Louth Falls, Ontario	Louth Falls, Ontario
Louth Falls, Ontario	Louth Falls, Ontario
Louth Falls, Ontario

Warning: It can be dangerous to view and photograph waterfalls. The footing can be wet and slippery, and an accidental fall can result in serious injury or death. Note also that many sections of waterfalls are on private property. Please respect these rights.

Go to the Index to Ontario Waterfalls

If you would like to be informed of future Ontario Waterfall posts, Click Here.

Marsh Falls

If you are making a trip to Algonquin and are planning to enter by the West Gate, Marsh Falls is nearby and is an interesting visit. It is fronted by some picturesque rocks and especially nice in Fall. Just east of Dwight on Highway 60, take 35 south about 1.6 km.

Warning: It can be dangerous to view and photograph waterfalls. The footing can be wet and slippery, and an accidental fall can result in serious injury or death. Note also that many sections of waterfalls are on private property. Please respect these rights.

Go to the Index to Ontario Waterfalls

If you would like to be informed of future Ontario Waterfall posts, Click Here.

After submitting some images for a new field guide, I was pleased to have a half dozen accepted, my next step was to send the publishers full size files. Now I had to find them. Some were on my internal hard drive, some were on an external hard drive and perhaps they were on some of the many CDs and DVDs I had in my office. I finally found them after hours of work but I realized I was in an organizational mess.

I had a copy of Lightroom and I had Bridge with my Photoshop software. Both pieces of software had excellent search and keywording facilities if I could set them up right. Here are the steps I took.

Get all of the images accessible on my computer.

Storage in the form of large external hard drives has become very inexpensive. I found I would have plenty of space for eight years of photography on two 500gb External drives. To this I added a 1 Terabyte drive to regularly back everything up to. It would be easy to add additional memory to the system as I needed it if I had things set up in a logical and consistent manner. That was the next step.

Setting up a Logical Directory System.

The next step was to move all the files into a logical system of folders. I decided to use the date they were taken. I set up a folder for each year (eg. 2008). I then set up 12 sub folders, one for each month (eg, 2008-03) Under each monthly sub folder I set up a daily sub folder for each day’s set of images I had (eg. 2008-03-22). This took me many weeks, working a few hours at a time, but it worked like a charm.

The default sorting for my computer operating system automatically was from oldest files to newest files, and when I loaded them into Lightroom or Bridge, it maintained this order. Have a look at the folders in the Lightroom screen shot above and you’ll see it is automatically in this order.

The only thing I added to the this structure was that on the daily folder names, I would often add the name of a place if I had gone away, for example Amherst was added to the 2008-12-11 folder. This serves as an easy visual reference to a special days shooting.

After each new days shooting, it was an easy matter to dowload the files to a new daily folder, and use Lightroom or Bridge to upload the new folder with its contents.

My next step was to have a system of rating and keywording.

If you would like to be informed of future Processing Workflow posts, Click Here.