Nebraskaland

66 Nebraskaland • March 2023 THE LAST STOP Nebraskans are nice. That's what people tell us. It's something we are proud of. One of the best parts of my job is meeting nice people while I'm out capturing photos of them enjoying the great outdoors. Ninety-nine percent of the time, when I introduce myself and ask if it's okay if I photograph them, the answer is "Sure. That would be great." Conversations about their experiences typically ensue, and often last for minutes. We talk about how their outing is going, where they are from, or how much they enjoy coming to whatever location we happen to be in. One of the worst parts of my job is keeping track of their names. We try to get the names of everyone we photograph and enter it in the metadata — the fancy name for where information about a photo is stored in the digital file — so if it ever runs in Nebraskaland, we can tell you who they are. The go-to for much of my 34 years in journalism has been the trusty reporter's notebook, a 4x8-inch spiral bound tablet that tucks nicely into my back pocket. The problem is I'm a real slacker when it comes to cataloging photos. I literally have stacks of those notebooks in my office, and sometimes when I get around to cataloging a shoot before I put it in our photo library, I can't put my hands on the right notebook. I thought I had found the answer a few years ago when I started recording a video of people telling me their names and where they are from. That video would be stored in the same folder on my computer as the still images. There's no way I could lose that. I found out the hard way late last year the method isn't foolproof. I was going through photographs from an ice- fishing trip to the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge from two years ago (I told you I was a slacker). The bite was slow for everyone on Hackberry Lake that day. But I'd seen a family fishing a few hundred yards away go running to check their tip-ups as flags went up more than once, and, bored, grabbed the camera, headed their way and introduced myself. I seem to recall there were three generations in that party: a grandfather, father, two older kids and two younger ones. The younger ones were having a ball, especially when dad loaded them into the ice sled and spun them in circles. They had caught some northern pike, and some nice ones at that. Their hot hole was next to the shore with barely a foot of water under 6 or 8 inches of ice. They were using a type of tip-up I hadn't seen but now own several of. They were Nebraska Nice and great photo subjects. And I have no idea what their names are. As we all know, technology is great … when it works. The microphones built into DSLR cameras, you see, don't handle wind well. And mine was pointing straight into it. I can get Josh and Jaydon out of that recording, but the rest is just noise. So if you happen to know these folks, please let me know so I can put names with the faces in my metadata. In the meantime, I'll continue to try and come up with the perfect workflow. Maybe I need to just turn back the clock and order more notebooks. By Eric Fowler UNIDENTIFIED

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