Well. Congratulations. You’ve made it to the end of this nine-week set of blogs about our epic 50-day trip around the eastern united states.

I have saved the best for last. You have traveled with me through eight of the nine preset keywords I use for quick tagging images in Lightroom. The final one is…!! (Drumroll please) NATURE!! It’s a monster one because as you can imagine it includes a LOT.

The preset keywords that fit under the Nature umbrella are as follows: plants, animals, weather, water, landscape, trail, rocks, beach, and park. I’m not married to these nine but that’s what I have so far. I then go to say…animals and further tag them with the following: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, fish, wild, and domestic. I only have eight here because I couldn’t think of a ninth.

This section goes like this: Nature>Plants>Flowers. Once the color words are attached to the image I can then add location, species if I know it, the number of petals, etc.

On this dandelion, I might add the words design, seeds, and stem.

The subcategories I’ve chosen under the Plants umbrella are as follows: flowers, wildflowers, trees, fungi, garden, leaves, green, succulent, and fruit. I literally edited this list while writing this blog. I replaced bark with fungi.

Trees are another one of my favorite subjects. These two images would be tagged with “roots”. I don’t yet have a tree subset as I can’t come up with enough keywords to make it worth the space. The above image would also include water.

I may be coming up with the tree subset as I write this. I could add bark, trunk, texture, moss, design, roots, forest, orchard…Hmm, I have eight.

I don’t consider myself a landscape photographer but I would categorize these two images as landscapes. Landscapes show up as a keyword under nature but that’s it, I don’t currently have a listing of landscapes. I suppose if one DID shoot a lot of landscapes they would be:  Desert, Plain, Wetland, Mountain, Coast, Lakes, Rivers, Forest, and Grassland.

Fungi!!

Now on to animals. It’s a big one. Let’s begin with domestic vs. wild. I don’t have this yet either but one could subcategorize domestic into dog, cat, fish, bird, working, horse, mule, pig, and cow.

This horse was working the streets of New Orleans.

When we stopped to see Ellen’s sister in Mississippi, this guy was in a pen on the property.

This beautiful bird was at my cousin’s home in North Carolina and the dinosaurs below were at my brother’s home in Denver.

My cousin owns four mules and this donkey on six acres outside of Chapel Hill.

These little cuties were escorted across the street, IN the crosswalk mind you, by their Canada Geese parents in Gatlinburg, TN.

I got to watch this handsome fellow eat some Blue Heron spaghetti at our camp in Mississippi.

This Carolina Wren was feeding her babies nestled in a home camera cover at our friend’s house in Weaverville, NC.

I happened to have my long lens with me on a short hike at our camp in Tennessee when this beauty took off from a tree.

South Llano River State Park outside of Junction, TX was AMAZING in the animal department. We spent a lot of time hanging out with armadillos AND I got to watch this mama and her three babies do squirrel activities.

Not sure whose teeth these are but it’s tagged under animals.

We saw a few turtles along the way which is always a treat. These guys were on a log in a swampy area of a park we walked in near Asheville, NC.

We found this fellow on my cousin’s porch in Hillsborough, NC.

My little green friend kept me company while I used the restroom at our camp in Louisiana.

Some of the bees from our beekeeping experience in St. Paul, NE.

Catching flying insects requires a bit of patience and a lot of pixels to delete later.

Water is another of my favorite places to hang out. I’m usually playing in, on, or around it and love finding patterns in its movement. This image fits under Nature>Water>clear, stream, pattern.

There you have it, our 50-day April 1st-May 20th epic adventure has come to a close in my blog world. Thanks for coming along and enjoying our adventure. It was certainly a joy to revisit all that we did.

June found us in Washington D.C. and New York City so STAY TUNED!!

Happy Shooting!