Returned from Tanzania with over 15,000 photos. Now what?

I just returned from my first ever safari in Eastern Africa. What a bucket list, dream-trip!!! I took over 15,000 photos and 1,000 short videos. My dream is to take images of remote, wild areas of the world and bring a visual experience to anyone interested enough to look, listen and hopefully go have their own dream trip in the future. I grew up on a National Geographic subscription my parents had for 20+ years, looking at images I never imaged existed and becoming fascinated with a "one day, I wish..." goal to see this for myself. Well it's happening now and I have a ton of little SD cards with all these images hiding on them. Time to curate them. This post is about what does one do with that many photos, a question my fellow travelers often ask.

The setting --> 7AM on the Serengeti

This lion cub was one of 7 cubs in a den of two lionesses on the Serengeti in Tanzania. It was early in the morning so the lionesses had presumably been hunting the prior night and were in need of rest. Half the cubs were still sleeping and the other half were getting restless, constantly moving about, playing with each other and any stick they could find. These cubs are about 4 weeks old and so, so precious!

My camera >>

When you don't know what the animal may do, what movement they may make, an unexpected shift in their point of view, or an action, a twitch of the ears -- so many unexpected things can happen, so I, like most other photographers, choose to shoot in Manual mode on medium to high continuous-shot. My camera, a Sony A7Riv, can get 8 frames per second. That's ALOT! So for every time I press the camera button once, I get 4-8 photos. That's the reason I can rack up 15K photos. I took over 22K photos I Antartica for the same reason. So my 15K photos stem from about 2,000 to 3,000 attempts to take a photo. Now that I'm home, I need to process all these photos.

My editing process >>

All my photos are shot in RAW format to capture the most amount of detail possible, so I need to download them to a more permanent storage drive. I rename them and make a second copy all at that time. I tend to do this step at the end of each day, otherwise it can become unmanageable. Images are copied onto a sturdy 2TB SanDisk external drive - very sturdy, and light for travel. For software, I use Lightroom Classic. It has so many functions, more than I need but at this point, it's just for getting the photos out of my camera and storing them into one place. I don't do any enhancements yet. When I have an hour or two free, I start by deleting all blurries and all unwanted dups. This first pass eliminates 50% of the photos I took and always feels like a wanted purge to get to the important ones. I truly delete the unwanted images at this point.

Next I rate the photos. One (1) means I would put it into my own photo album, only for consumption by me as a trip memory. Two (2) means it's pretty good and would make my top 25 list. Three (3) is rarely used but if so means WOWZA! I can't believe I took that. I'd sell that or use it to enter a photography contest. Videos get the same rating but very few make it past a one for me. I may also reject a few more but those with no rating are left alone for now and may be further deleted in the future.

Then I add keywords and begin to edit any photo I've rated. My most common edit is to straighten the horizon. If I had my druthers I'd stop there. In my opinion, a really good photo is about composition and hopefully good lighting. It is not about what filter I can add. If I choose to edit further it's to subtly correct lighting or refresh the composition by cropping the photo differently.

Basically I'm done. The photo above is a "2" for me.

So are these...

I wish I could remove that one leaf over his right cheek, but I can see his face and the tongue is what's charming to me and shows the movement of that moment in time, so I'm okay with it.

Then he bites the sticks. I suspect he is teething. He keeps at this for a while. Every time, he makes a face. Together they all tell a sweet little story.

Evolving the story >>

I'm looking to better my photography at each outing. Learning from each experience, so I can fine tune telling a story in one image.

For me the story here is simply a sweet infant playing in the quiet of the morning and it brings oohs and ahh to anyone I share them with. This is pure happiness.

I am looking to evolve stories of conservation and wildlife preservation efforts, so the imagery that I capture, and the stories that I tell will improve each time. For today, I'm very content with this happiness shot!

I'm down from 15,000 photos to about 2,000, in the broad collection that are clear, visually interesting, and not crooked. Within that pool, I also have a top 100 that have made all my final cuts and tweaks that I will use as opportunities to share arise.

Final thoughts >>

I am quite pleased that I have ended up with a final pool of 100 well-curated photos of my first ever safari to Africa. What is just as important though is putting down the camera, talking to the guides and fellow travelers to get to know their stories better and most of all just being in the moment which fills me with gratitude for the power of Mother Nature. I love taking the pictures, but stopping, putting down the camera, and taking in what is offered to all the senses fills my heart and makes me feel connected to something so much bigger and makes be humble and grateful to get to experience it.

Look for some more animal stories in the coming days! I saw two wildebeest river crossings!! I can't wait to share that story!!

-Cindy