Every week I take photos of transport animals. I’ve been doing it since the rescue formed–first just a few photos each transport, then individual shots of every animal. Keep in mind those early transports might be 25 to 40 animals.
Now I shoot anywhere from 350 to 600 photos a week of 200-plus animals. GOOD FOR THE ANIMALS. Those are all the cats and dogs who aren’t dead because rescues in other states want them and our rescue group gets them there. This is passion, and it takes a lot of people and moving parts.
Shooting the photos is a volunteer job for me. A labor of love. Thus it comes behind my paying job for the rescue organization. By necessity, it’s a lower priority to get these photos together and into collages for publication on the org’s web site.
I bring this up because someone recently said to me, “What does it take you to do the transport photos? An hour or two?”
That’s so funny.
First there are the four or more hours at transport. Then the time it takes to actually upload them to my computer, name them with the animals’ names, get them into online photo archives in case my computer blows up, and finally, create collages with the help of a nifty software… Anywhere from 8 to 12 hours per transport, depending on how cranky software OUT OF MY CONTROL is being.
Now… I work seven days a week. Never less than 6 hours a day. I have worked as many as 20 hours a day.
If you do the math, and you realize that now and again, I like to sleep, have dinner with friends, run the kinds of errands we all run, or just get the hell away from my desk, I don’t have an extra ANY hours.
And this is why I’m still stuck on last March’s photos. Do you think by last March I mean March 2019? No. I mean March 2018.
Crazy, huh?
