South Dakota Photos

This photo was taken at night in the Badlands National Park using a Yashica medium format TLR mounted on a tripod.  It was very windy, so I made sure the tripod was positioned firmly on the ground and removed the carrying straps from both the camera and the tripod to reduce the risk of vibrations.  I set the aperture to maximum and left the shutter open from about 9pm to 3am.  I used Ilford Delta 120 ASA 100 film.   Initially, when I set up the camera, the sky was clear with no moon.  However, after a period of time the moon became visible, which is why the landscape is illuminated.  There were also rapidly moving clouds, which explains some of the gaps in the star trails and lightness of the sky. 

I took this photo at a field just outside the Badlands National Park using the same Yashica camera. 

In the Badlands Park you'll often stumble upon a lone male bison grazing.  I give them a wide birth, but sometimes, you accidentally come upon one quietly wallowing in the sagebrush.  That was the case with the bison in this photograph.  I already had my camera set up on it's tripod to photograph a portion of the creek when I looked over and saw him standing there watching me.  I snapped this photo and continued on my way. 

Sheep Mountain Table

Sage Creek

Custer State Park annual bison round-up

Recovering accidentally deleted photographs

Recently, I helped my parents recover some deleted photographs from their hard drive using a Linux program called "photorec."  Though there were probably only a few hundred photos deleted, photorec was able to find more than 100,000 jpegs totalling about 1GB of in size.  Many of these photos consisted of tiny thumbnails that had been temporarily cached by the web browser.  To help me sort through these photos, I wrote a script using the Python Imaging Library (PIL) that examines the exif metadata. 

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

"""

Created on Sat Jul 27 01:02:56 2013

@author: dan

"""

from PIL import Image

from PIL.ExifTags import TAGS

import os, shutil

#helps to sort the photos into separate folders with model names

def main(directory,dest):

modellist = review_models(directory,dest)

handle_files(directory,dest,modellist)

# function to review exif data

def get_exif_data(fname):

ret = {}

img = Image.open(fname)

if hasattr(img,'_getexif'):

exifinfo = img._getexif()

if exifinfo != None:

for tag, value in exifinfo.items():

decoded = TAGS.get(tag, tag)

ret[decoded] = value

return ret

#select files taken by a specific model of camera and move to a specified folder

def review_files(directory,dest,model):

fileses = os.walk(directory)

for f in fileses:

path = f[0]

images = f[2]

for i in images:

g = os.path.join(path,i)

try:

ret = get_exif_data(g)

items = ret.items()

for item in items:

if item[0] == 'Model':

if item[1] == model:

shutil.move(g,dest)

except:

pass

# sorts photos by camera brand

def handle_files(directory,dest,modellist):

models = open(modellist,'r')

ml = models.read()

mm = ml.split(",")

for m in mm:

try:

newpath = os.path.join(dest,m)

if not os.path.exists(newpath):

os.makedirs(newpath)

except:

pass

fileses = os.walk(directory)

for f in fileses:

path = f[0]

images = f[2]

for i in images:

g = os.path.join(path,i)

try:

ret = get_exif_data(g)

items = ret.items()

for item in items:

if item[0] == 'Model':

outpath = os.path.join(dest,item[1])

shutil.move(g,outpath)

except:

pass

#creates a txt file listing all models seperated by commas

def review_models(directory,dest):

fileses = os.walk(directory)

txt = os.path.join(directory,"errors.txt")

txt2 = os.path.join(dest,"Models.txt")

models = open(txt2,'w')

models.close()

errorfile = open(txt,'w')

errorfile.close()

for f in fileses:

path = f[0]

images = f[2]

for i in images:

try:

g = os.path.join(path,i)

ret = get_exif_data(g)

items = ret.items()

for item in items:

if item[0] == 'Model':

models = open(txt2,'a')

models.write(item[1])

models.write(",")

models.close()

except:

error = open(txt,'a')

error.write(i + " \n")

error.close()

return txt2

#finds photos with identical creation datetimes and moves the smaller #fragments to a different location

def rmDuplicates(directory,dest):

fileses = os.walk(directory)

for f in fileses:

path = f[0]

images = f[2]

for i in images:

try:

g1 = os.path.join(path,i)

date1 = findDate(path,i)

fileses2 = os.walk(directory)

for f2 in fileses2:

path2 = f2[0]

images2 = f2[2]

for i2 in images2:

try:

g2 = os.path.join(path2,i2)

if g2 == g1:

pass

else:

stat1 = os.stat(g1)

stat2 = os.stat(g2)

s1 = stat1.st_size

s2 = stat2.st_size

date2 = findDate(path2,i2)

if date2 == date1:

if int(s1)>int(s2):

shutil.move(g2,dest)

else:

shutil.move(g1,dest)

except:

pass

except:

pass

#returns date and time image was created

def findDate(path,filename):

g = os.path.join(path,filename)

ret = get_exif_data(g)

items = ret.items()

photo = None

for item in items:

if item[0] == 'DateTimeDigitized':

photo = item[1]

return photo

def print_exif(path,filename):

g = os.path.join(path,filename)

ret = get_exif_data(g)

items = ret.items()

vals = ret.values()

for item in items:

if item[0] == 'DateTimeDigitized':

print item[1]

#print ret.keys()

# print vals

print " \n"

print "EXIF data for photo: " + g + ". "

#for item in items:

# print item[:-1]

# moves all of the photographs from their recup* folders to a single #directory

def group_files(larger_directory,outputfile):

fileses = os.listdir(larger_directory)

for files in fileses:

path = os.path.join(larger_directory,files)

f = os.walk(path)

txt = os.path.join(outputfile,"errors.txt")

errorfile = open(txt,'w')

errorfile.close()

for i in f:

images = i[2]

for image in images:

ipath = os.path.join(path,image)

try:

shutil.move(ipath,outputfile)

except:

error = open(txt,'a')

error.write(ipath + " \n")

error.close()