I am building a sizable collection of photographs of animals - and I look to 'collect' species in form of photograph. I wonder if anyone else here indulges in this hobby?
That's how I found this forum. Before when visiting a zoo it was sometimes mainly to get a great picture of a great animal, and off course to see all the animals, but I never really looked at what the animal was really called *shame*, for example, I know what a Coati is, but I never really looked into what sub-species it would be, or even if there are different ones. Last week I decided to go through all my pictures I took over the years, and see if I could find the zoo-maps or lists of animals that zoo had/has, because I wanted to start labeling all my pictures. So when entering "coati" in the search, all the coati pics would come up, with the correct names aswel, so I could also see what their differences are. And then I ended up here, when looking for the San Antonio animal list. And recently been going through a list of zoo's in the country, to see which animals they have, and if there are any I've never seen before and seeing if we can go there.
four or five years ago, I set out to photograph as many threatened mammals that were exhibited in Europe as I could, but all my photos and the excel sheets to reference them are a disorganised mess now. I have photos on several discs, the majority of which need deleting.
That sounds like something I'd be very happy with doing! I've not been to many though, sadly, as I don't drive, and public transport isn't always the best. I feel very lucky I managed to visit America twice and managed to go to San Antonio and San Fransisco and see some animals I never saw before at the time.
I was planning on going to the US or Australia the autumn that covid hit and had given it some thought for this October, but I need to top up my savings again.
Sorry for resurfacing an older thread. I have been collecting animal taxa photos for almost three years now. My collection includes both wild and captive taxa. Subspecies are also included. My totals are currently on 2021 taxa and I also record how many new taxa I photograph per month, for instance I have photographed new 98 taxa in September alone.
I collect photographs of animals I have taken in public collections, including species, subspecies and domestic breeds), all organised into different groups. So far, I have: Amphibians - 40 images Birds - 313 images Carnivores - 80 images Domesticated Animals (including hybrid species) - 36 images Fishes - 108 images Invertebrates - 113 images Marsupials and Monotremes - 12 images Other Mammals - 25 images (includes afrotheres, insectivores, bats and xenarthrans) Primates - 67 images Reptiles - 141 images Rodents - 24 images Ungulates - 70 images
I think it has been some idea of mine for quite a while. But I think when I was younger it was a bit different; I didn't fully understand taxonomy at the time, and so used the alphabet quite a bit as my main ordering system of things and always looked forward to having all 26 letters represented anyhow in the collection. That particular goal has been realised for a decent amount of time, especially if one scrutinises all of the alternate names for things, species name vs general name [Etruscan shrew and shrew], all of the taxonomic levels that could be scrutinised [I would think 'xenarthran' would be rather useful in that regard, as there aren't that many 'general' mammal names beginning with 'X'] Nowadays I am more taxonomically focused. But I do think a sort of alphabetical scrapbook to keep pictures in would be nice to have someday. The whole alphabet thing turned itself into a decent obsession in my earlier years. I was curious if anyone else arranged their photos in such a manner one point or another?
I have my photos organized alphabetically in my folders of birds, fish, mammals etc mainly due to the fact that the drive I store them on does so. It also makes sorting new photographs of species far easier than trawling through the different taxonomic rankings to reach the necessary folder. Not only that but it also helps me keep tabs on how many taxa photos I have in total in a larger folder and therefore I can compare with ease against my Microsoft Excel document which holds the admin information such as where the photo was taken, other collections I have seen the taxa at etc
My images are saved as location, date, animal etc and then tagged with any other information which might be relevant (free flight aviaries vs open, to enable me to find photos of birds without trimmed wings, for example), which provides enough for efficient searching. I only keep photos that I rate in an indexable form. While I back up everything I take (physical and cloud) on a visit to a collection or a reserve or a photo session on a walk or whatever, I'll end up with perhaps 10-35 final 'keepers' after processing, if I am very lucky and those are in viewable albums online. I don't have an issue with the same animal being photographed many times (indeed I do that on purpose), or the same species from different collections. I am always hoping for a better shot than the last one and you can always try harder, or be luckier. And the more you do it the better it is. So I am never 'one and done'. I suspect I am in something of a zoochat minority in that I don't keep lists nor track / count particular animals / taxa or species I have seen. Though I do have a bit of a list of things I would like to see (including exhibits) and I read other peoples lists on zoochat to find interesting stuff to go and look at!
