Here's What Happened

A couple of years ago, a small disaster took place. Or so I thought. I had issued a "call for work" for pictures themed around museums, to create one of our "Baker's Dozen" readers' pictures portfolios. As the pictures came in, I'd sneak glances at some of them on my phone or in passing. I have a very good visual memory, and many of the ones I sneaked a peek at, I remembered.

A while later, I got around to beginning to edit the portfolio—and discovered to my distress that a number of the submissions I remembered were missing.

I moved the rest to a different folder, for safeguarding, but I was mystified as to what happened to the others. I searched the inbox all kinds of ways but they didn't show up. I even went so far as to look through huge swaths of my inbox manually.

Every time I returned to the diminished group of submissions, I'd get sidetracked by feeling troubled about what I had somehow done wrong.

Part of this was sensitization. Periodically throughout my life I've suffered various disasters caused by my inability to stay organized. A new one reminds me of all the others, like a fresh wound that also opens old ones.

On Friday, I briefly put up two posts, one that apologized for never having completed the "In the Museum" set, the other that announced a new call for work. The first several responses were very critical of me, enough so that I took those two posts down again.

Once again I resolved to complete the original task, and once again I returned to the folder with the partial group of submissions in it. Then, almost absentmindedly, I went back to search the inbox again. But I periodically move old emails to an archive folder; by now, all the "BDMuseum" emails had been moved to the archive folder. So of course a search of the current inbox turned up nothing at all.

That's when the little light bulb above my head finally turned on.

I think what happened was that at some point after asking for the submissions, I moved a whole pile of emails to the archive folder, and the pile happened to include some of the earlier submissions. Then when I searched the inbox to begin the editing process, the ones I had moved were of course gone.

It just didn't occur to me what I had done, at the time.

This time, however, it took about three seconds for me to realize where they all were, once I tried searching the inbox. When I searched the archive folder for the keyword, "BDMuseum," there they all were—hundreds of submissions, including the ones I once thought I had lost.

Simple, once I figured it out. But it didn't occur to me two years ago.

Others
Clearly the idea of "In the Museum" resonated with you, because this was the largest group of submissions I've ever had to winnow down to 13. There were many more good ones than the ones I chose. "Honorable mentions" of pictures that almost made the cut include (but this is not a complete list): Jim Arthur, Yann Pouiol, Paul Braverman, John Dana, Don Seymour, Hans Berkout, Charles Rozier, Michael Wall, Tom Hassler, Richard Conolly, Carlos Quijano Altamirano, the four I mentioned in the post, Roy Feldman (I think I have a sort of sympatico with Roy's work because I always like his pictures), Max Cottrell, Siddhartha Chaudhuri, Jayanand Govindaraj, Martin E. Rich, Kyle Batson, John Bour, Barry Prager, Peter Barker, James Morauta, Nicolas Vincent, Ned Bunnell, Mike Bigalke, Phil Thomas, Bruce Reeve, and a good two dozen others. Lots of good stuff.

A touch of criticism: I noticed a fair number of the submissions had too much of an approximate, "snapshotty" quality, as if the photographer expected the subject to do a little too much of the work. Another fault was that a few of the pictures just didn't telegraph "museum" enough...they were taken at one, but might not have been.

Curiously, almost all of the submissions came from men. Maggie Osterberg, the lone woman chosen, no longer reads TOP (people do come and go—she was one of the ones who said goodbye). I hope the next Baker's Dozen call for work (coming up soon now, that is if I haven't "cried wolf" with this one) will inspire more participation from the women among our readers.

Anyway, it stretched my editing skills. It was difficult to bring a single set into focus. Catch me on a different day, and I'll bet some of my selections might have been different.

Shadow
In retrospect I'm actually grateful for those harsh comments on Friday that shamed me into attempting the task yet again. If that hadn't happened I might still not know how I screwed up two years ago.

Anyway, this sets a record for the longest interval between intention and result in TOP's existence, and I hope 856 days is a record that will never be broken. Again, I apologize for the SNAFU. My screwups don't often end happily, so I'm glad this one did.

Happy ending or not, I'm glad this is over and put to bed at long last so we can move on. The past has too much of a hold on me; it often casts too much of a shadow on the future, and that's no good.

And if you haven't seen it yet, scroll down to the next post and see "In the Museum"!

Mike

Product o' the Week:

Fingertip Pulse Oximeter. The link is from TOP to Amazon. This relates to health, not photography—it replaces one of the advanced functions on the latest Apple Watch. Takes your pulse and measures your blood oxygen. For heart monitoring, checking for COVID (low blood oxygen is an early warning sign) and slow heartbeat. I'm learning to correlate the way I feel with the readings. Works with iOS and Android. Nifty little device, super easy to use, and cheap.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Comments

[Richard Alan Fox]

Mike
Try this app for searching email.

https://nisus.com/InfoClick/

Might be of use.

[Richard Parkin]

When I used to have similar projects to yours I used the MailTags add-on for Apple Mail. It’s trivial to name a new project and have MailTags tag each Mail automatically and they will then appear in an appropriately named Smart Folder. No moving emails about involved. It does other useful things with keywords. https://smallcubed.com/scs/

MailTags is now part of the larger MailSuite which does a lot of other, no doubt useful, things and like everyone has gone to a kind of annual subscription.

A more basic solution for searching Apple Mail is InfoClick https://nisus.com/InfoClick/ which is $15 on the App Store and works really well for searching for emails. It has been available for many years and is still updated.

[Jim Arthur]

Thanks for answering the bell. I really like Maggie’s picture from the new set.

“Going in one more round when you don’t think you can, that’s what makes all the difference.” - Rocky Balboa

[grigoris]

thank you for this post. i usually screw up deadlines and other important stuff. i am glad you finally managed to do this. i have never send you any photo but i always like your photo critique. maybe you can write a couple (or a dozen) posts about your take on the photos presented, and why not post a few more collective random excellence ones about the honorable mentions.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Congratulations on achieving the new record delay! But much more important, congratulations on figuring out that the photos weren't lost after all and you can follow through on the project, because I think it's a really cool idea twice, the reader submissions, and the particular theme.

This sounds like one of those "things that turn off your brain" situations. Seems like you were thinking "Drat, I've done that again, deny deny delay!" At least this time, when you faced it squarely, it was fixable. The "drat" is always appropriate to these situations, but "deny" and "delay" make things worse, not better. (Trust me on this!) At worst, the public shame could be a year in the past; and, as happened this time, there's no need for public shame, and two years of feeling bad about it could have been skipped.

(Yes, I'm kind of assuming you could have had the realization that resolved this at any time, and I admit that's not really how these things work, not reliably. I don't know how long you have to wait to be sure you won't have the realization, I suspect there's no safe time limit. And I don't know how to tell from internal feelings when you might vs. might not figure it out. But tackling the problem and really working on it, in my experience, makes it vastly more likely that I will have the realization than just waiting does, and in this case, when you buckled down to make a solid try at recovery, it came. But the usual assumption that everybody of course is just like me isn't all that reliable either.)

[Jim]

Well, I'm glad you responded to it with positivity and that it had a good ending, in terms of finding the pics. But I find myself quite surprised and disappointed that people reacted to you harshly. I'm an atheist, but there's a lot to be said about the ethic of "let the person who is without sin cast the first stone". I'm not sure that there are many of us out here in Reader Land who haven't dropped the ball on some project or other. Especially this last year, with a global pandemic raging, and not least knowing what you've been through personally.

And, heck, this is a free blog! I try to use your Amazon links to buy stuff, but mostly you're giving this content away for free. Grouching about the odd project that doesn't make it to conclusion seems, well, harsh.

[Rick]

I think people can forget that the admin of this blog is very much a one person show, and that you have an entire life outside generating content here and maintaining this space. You clearly take the "Bakers Dozen" submissions and posts seriously, and value the work your readers submit. As such I imagine these events are a lot of extra labour.

I loved this "In the Museum" Baker's Dozen even though the theme initially didn't interest me. On viewing the photos posted I was drawn in.

As an aside, one of the things that keeps me coming back to this blog is your humility as author. It's refreshing to read someone discuss mistakes they may have made or problems they've had in a way that invites discussion and also makes the blog a varied and always entertaining read. I know that you'll approach whatever you write about or do here with curiosity, and an approach that welcomes even those who have no prior knowledge of the topic at hand. You manage to make the writing here approachable to all while at the same time not dumbing anything down. TOP is a pretty special place on an internet that's becoming increasingly hostile and bland.

[darlene]

It's all good, Mike. A very nice selection that is enjoyable to experience. Thanks to all that shared. (✿´‿`)

[Pi Manson]

It’s really great to see this. I really enjoy when you share photos, of your own or readers’, and the sense of community on your website is palpable and joyful. I wish I could contribute more. I particularly love your print critiques. I’m minded to post you something over the Atlantic.

[Bill]

As they say "Crow is best eaten hot."

[Paul Martini]

The "In The Museum" baker's dozen was great, thank you, and thanks
for the explanation. I'm still holding my breath for the "Grandkids" baker's dozen (well, I have breathed, but just once a week).

[Phil]

I'm glad you found them and were able to finish the job. It's good. I'm enjoying looking at the set. I often get stalled and take a long time to finish a project. I don't usually have any good reason like losing track of the content (I shudder to think of the volume of email you must get), but I do recognize the accomplishment and, well, relief, when all the pieces are finally organized and finished! I hope you do run the smartphone contest, I've already got my submission picked out!

[Bryan Geyer]

"The past has too much of a hold on me; it often casts too much of a shadow on the future…" Well, don't sweat that now—can it until you're my age (90), when long term perspective can apply.

[Bearman]

Meh. Better late than never.

[Well which is it? --Mike]

[KeithB]

Is the title of the post a reference to "Monk"?

[Yann Pouiol]

I'm sad that I didn't make it to the chosen dozen, yet seeing my name on TOP after 10 years of daily visits feels like the sweetest silver medal !
The quality of this selection is very high, this was a real treat to watch.

[Bruce Bordner]

I'll bet that you didn't have "people in the museum" as a theme before you looked at the submissions. That's going to happen with any categorized contest or show. The curator has to take advantage of what they find in the raw material, so any of these is so subjective.
If you want a real test, get paid.

[Thomas Walsh]

Re: categories for cell phone photos (I loathe the smartphone label), you wrote, "...the words tending to funnel viewers' conceptions into reductionist bins..." Thank you for a very salient observation that could easily cover so many other groupings. Not far behind in inducing a gag response are the so-called Best Lists.