I have over 10,000 photographs stored on my computer. I would have more, but I decided to be ruthless and delete a few thousand. I'm sure I'll soon regret that action, so the photos are still sitting in the electronic trash can. Dumpster-diving on a computer isn't too messy.
I store the photos month-by-month throughout the calendar year. After the year ends, I decide how to reorganize the photos so that I can easily find a certain flower that bloomed in.... was it May or June?
Last year, I started adding keywords (tags) to my photos so that I could filter my search. For tags, I used the location in the garden as well as color (magenta, orange, red, yellow, etc.). I'd like to tag every flower by variety, but that seems like too much work... from Agastache to Zinnia.
I'm on to a new idea that will take the gardening world by storm!
I use an Apple MacBook with iPhoto. The iPhoto software has "face recognition" capabilities. I tried it out for everyone in our family and it worked beautifully! Searching those 10,000 photos, it recognized each and everyone of us.
The most amazing thing is that this face recognition software can pick a face out of a crowd! Yes! It picked up faces in places that I didn't even know were in the photos! I was relieved that Osama bin Laden nor any other terrorists were found among my thousands of photos.
This iPhoto feature posts all of the "Faces" on a corkboard background. Click on a person. Magic. All of the photos of that person are displayed. Easy, cute, clever and it works great!
Of course, being the technical geek that I am, I decided to try this face recognition software on flower photos.
The coneflower (echinacea) has a very recognizable "face" in my opinion. I pulled up a happy flower face and told iPhoto to "Name" it "Coneflower."
Unfortunately, iPhoto couldn't recognize Coneflower's face among the thousands of photos. Hmm... Is it unrecognizable because the coneflower doesn't have two eyes?
Undaunted, I tried Gaillardia's face, but had no results.
Just think. If we had flower recognition software, we could easily organize our gardening photos. Flower Recognition Software would be able to pick a coneflower out of a garden full of gaillardias.
Excuse me, but I'm off to write an email to Apple's iPhoto development team!
Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks/copyrights/patents owned by those respective companies or persons.