KHA

Just yell at the skies like Grandpa Simpson till they bend to your will! No — I've learned to appreciate all kinds of skies, and I do my best to work with whatever Mother Nature gives me on the day. (Other than having slowly learned not to waste my time shooting buildings that will have angles too much in shadow in the afternoon of a cloudless, sunny day. Just too much contrast to try to compensate for, even with fill light in Lightroom.) The positives of flat gray or white days can be nice, even light; having subjects or elements of subjects really stand out against the neutral background; and sometimes lending photos a brooding, Impressionist, painterly look. Play the hand you're dealt. And if it's absolutely unplayable, that's just Mother Nature telling you to go home and tend to admin! Now I'm off to spend the day doing admin and clearing off my computer so I can actually upload the 128 Gb cards I seem to be filling every few weeks now . . .

Thanks, Starsphinx. I guess if there's a chance it's a regular outing for them I don't need to feel as bad. And it occurred to me that they have no idea what I'm doing when I'm standing there taking pictures -- she might think I'm just taking my time preparing an attack, and a DSLR aimed at them could look pretty threatening. In general, though, animals seem to trust me, and I feel like maybe they sense my harmlessness as a vegetarian.

It's a coincidence that the topic of disturbing animals has come up, because I was just feeling guilty the other day when I drove into a city parking lot and was surprised to see what I think was a mother duck and her very small ducklings just sitting on the ground basking in the shade provided by a car one space over from me. I didn't want to take the time to put my telephoto lens on because I was afraid they'd disappear before I had a chance, plus I didn't want to draw attention to myself from the people in the area. So at first I rolled down my passenger window, leaned over, and took a few shots with my kit lens; but it was difficult not getting the car interior in the shot. So then since they didn't seem to be moving, I got more courageous and got out of the car and took a few shots. They still looked too distant, so I gingerly moved a little closer. They had been watching me the whole time, so I didn't think they'd feel unsafe; but I guess mama felt I got too close with my last move. She turned her head and communicated with her children, and everyone slowly got up and ambled underneath the car. I felt guilty for having disturbed their chill time just sitting out unprotected, feeling carefree enough to be in the middle of a lot enjoying the beautiful day. And then the whole family had to relocate under a greasy car because of me! I hope they moved back after I left. So now if a similar situation happens I'm going to take a few medium shots with the kit lens, then stop and take the extra time to put on that telephoto!

I can't speak to UK law, but in the US there's no law against asking questions of people with whom you have contracts. And congratulations on your first sale, Virender!

I didn't mean to go this in-depth about my process; I was actually just trying to let the OP know he wasn't alone. But since everyone keeps asking, here's more clarification. Unlike with compound modifiers, I put a space before and after each hyphen to separate words. This helps me keep distinct words separate from multi-word phrases. E.g., "Woman - Women - Girl - Girls" vs. "Woman running through park". Visually, it helps me to have a hyphen separating them rather than a space so it's clear they are separate words rather than a whole phrase describing something. Image Manager doesn't actually import/show the hyphens; it seems to treat them as spaces. It could possibly be an issue, except again, when a tag that had these separating hyphens already removed upon placement into a posted image in the IM and looks fine, but then gets pasted into another image and gets truncated or disappears completely, it does suggest the hyphens were not the issue. Now when I used to put these hyphenated tags into Lightroom, they did frequently break up into individual tags upon import (but not always, puzzlingly) even though I only used commas at the end of the entire tag, along with sometimes disappearing completely, so that's why I stopped putting them into LR before upload. And even ones that didn't have hyphens sometimes broke up; e.g., "Fashion Week New York City February 2019" might become "Fashion", "Week", "New", "York", etc., and since that maxed out 50 tags pretty quickly, there would be tags that evidently got imported but that I couldn't see until I deleted others. So the IM would say I had 50 tags, but then I would delete one and the number wouldn't go down to 49. I would have to delete many, many tags in order to finally see that number change. I have adapted, so it's really not an issue for me. I was just showing solidarity with the OP.

I don't actually use individual words as tags anymore, which is one reason I suspect my issue differs slightly from others'. I tend to max out the character count in each tag by using multiple words separated by hyphens (and separate each tag from another with commas), so it's not an issue with a single word getting truncated; it'll be a word(s) at the end of a series of words. When it's just a matter of having reached the maximum character count of that tag, I can tell, because it automatically goes into the tag list without me hitting enter, and I simply delete the extra word upon reentry. But often, as mentioned, the same word count that doesn't work when it's automatically uploaded, or pasted, works when I enter it directly into the Image Manager. That's why I wondered in my previous post if it was a limitation with the copy/upload function having a smaller character limit than the tag itself. When I've tried to copy and paste a whole series of my complex tags from my text doc at once it just turns into a mess, so that's why I do things in smaller chunks now.

With me it's not as simple as character limits, because as in the example I mentioned with pasting from one image in the Image Manager to another, the number of characters had already been accepted in the original image. I selected all the tags, say 30, and pasted them into another image through the tag entry box. Upon pasting, there were only, say, 22 tags, and some of the ones that were there had been cut off. When I deleted those, and repasted each tag individually it worked fine and there was no problem with the number of characters. Perhaps there's a limit to how many characters can be copied or uploaded that's different from how many characters can exist in the final output.

I do some pretty hefty tagging, pushing the character limits, so that could have something to do with it. I'm a lover of language and naturally see things from many perspectives, so unlike many here, I spend more time having to delete excess tags I wanted to use than coming up with them. I don't mind the extra work, because it's paid off in my CTR, and by doing them manually my perfectionist soul feels better about verifying things are correct as I go along.

I stopped putting all my keywords into Lightroom beforehand a long time ago because I spent more time cleaning up the truncations after upload than if I'd entered everything manually. It also often happens when I try to paste tags from one image in the Image Manager to another. Then I have to spend time trying to figure out which words are truncated or missing completely. So now I either enter tags into the Image Manager one or a few at a time that I copy from a text document, or else copy from an existing image in the IM, making sure to keep a careful eye on the number of words selected so I can make sure the same number get pasted. I like to double-check everything anyway, so I'd rather spend the extra time verifying as I go along than doing detective work to try to clean up afterwards. I figure what I lose in number of images posted due to all the time it takes me, I gain in numbers of views and zooms. But I do hope to do more posting when I can spare some time from a project I need to work on, and when I take a break from all the shooting summer encourages. I still have to go back and clean up/finish tagging some of the images I rushed to post.

If you think that's bad, imagine, if you can, MGM, a thread wherein the OP not only doesn't thank you for trying to help him, but actually berates you for having the temerity to defend yourself against a couple of forum members who have ganged up on you . . . 😎

Wow, that really does look like a little Batman. I had no idea how human their bodies looked, at least on my little phone screen. Great shot.

Great, thank you!

This useful thread shouldn't be hiding away on the Introductions forum! Glad I stumbled on it! Very cool, what you do, and pretty pictures on your site. I think it's wonderful when someone identifies and satisfies a need in the world with their funky niche interest -- one of their reasons for being here, perhaps! I always wonder how to identify things growing on trees (other plants, mostly), because photography has really helped me to start noticing there is frequently foliage enthusiastically growing on trees that isn't part of the tree itself, sometimes dominating the entire trunk. I need to start doing some serious research because I took photos recently of what might be diseased, insect-damaged, and moldy logs and trunks, so I might have to become an expert in tree disease diagnosis in order to add metadata. Looks like your site could come in handy for some of the growths, so thanks!

Are you sure portfolio page visibility is still on in your dashboard?

Thanks very much, NYCat and Marianne. Very helpful. Heads-up -- some of the search terms I found were for Luna Park, so I'm going to try to post more shots I have. Maybe you two could keep that in mind for a shoot in case the searcher's still seeking . . .