Here’s the entire set of photos I took. Some of them are going to be pretty bad, as I was trying to create some HDR shots of it, which wasn’t a good idea anyway. However, the best one ended up being the underexposed (-2 ev) shot.
Pretty cool bird. We have a pair nesting near the porch. They are not shy. Not much bothers them.
I’ll post some more as I develop them. It was a great night to go out and grab some sunsets. 
One of the first steps in getting this all organized in WordPress is to get the data right before import. That’ll help us avoid pulling up each iris one at a time to make corrections. If I get it right in a spreadsheet first, then import, updates will be much easier to manage.
Attached is a PDF of what iris we have. There are probably tons of mistakes, but it’s a start.
I still don’t know how I’m going to put all of this together. Thus, I’m trying different things to see if I can get a kick-start. Part of the challenge when I’m going around iris to iris doing the videos is matching up iris names with videos with the name of IMG_0931.mov . Some I solve by just speaking the name of the iris once I start videoing, but that’s only effective if I can find the nameplate. Once the iris get to blooming, it can get pretty crowded in the area of the signs. So I’m thinking about a map. Mom put together a grid, and has all the names written on that grid. This will help a lot! So I want to give it a bit more context in a plot map that I slapped together with Photoshop.
Now to put names to the dark brown patches, which will help me categorize the iris in the database. I think I’ll just start with A, B, C until we figure it out.
I didn’t have the right lens on the first go around, and missed the focus on a few. Therefore, I shall try again!
This gallery contains 21 photos.
Mom’s iris garden hobby has turned into another hobby for me. She tries to keep meticulous records about each iris. Who she bought them from, when they bloom, what awards they have won. Year after year, I look at what she’s doing to keep these records, and try to come up with some ideas to help her out. It used to be on a database. That database was Microsoft Access which I have loathed since the day it was born. It did good for her, but was getting so big her data outgrew the tool.
My first trip of the year involved carrying a truck load of stuff. Gear, scopes, chewing tobacco for Brent, a pellet gun, all of my camera equipment, a PC that will stay up here all summer, and anything else I didn’t want to haul up every week.
Quite the windy trip for the first half of the drive, with a nasty detour that takes you 14 miles out of the way. I may find a different route next time. I’ll have to measure it. It might be better to go through Sioux Falls again. Actually I can’t believe the detour is even up. It started last year much further north, and wasn’t that bad. This year the closed more of the NEW highway, sent you west 7 miles, then north to I-90 to eventually hook up with highway 60 again. It’s got to be government funded, there’s no other explanation for the slowness.
