Will, I have been using Lr even before it was called LR... I have Photoshop as well and have had since the beginning of PS. there is nothing that Lightroom can do that Photoshop cant except... 1 catalog your images quickly, and 2 process your images non-destructively.

that said, I use LR for every image and PS for a few... I can do almost everything in LR that needs to be done to process an image, but if I need to use layers, then I move to PS. personally, I would recommend LR to everyone, but I know that many are set in their ways and wont/dont want to learn anything new, and as we get older we are more set! LOL one of the best parts of LR is that you can apply the settings that you used on one image to many at the same time via the sync option... yes I know that it can be done in PS as well, but it takes a lot longer, also, I believe that the tools are laid out better in LR.... just my thoughts.

You would probably be better served to add another external hard drive in addition to your backup drive and keep your photos on that new drive like many of us do. LR is NOT storing your photos. It simply makes a record of where they are and your edits, so it does not care where you put them so long as you don't move them around outside of the LR interface. I have two external drives for photo storage and one large external for auto backup of everything, then a second backup of just the photos on a portable drive.

Your computer needs breathing room to run those photo softwares, so you don't want to overcrowd it with image files.

Unfortunately, I need a lens that is much longer than the two you have recommended.

Last night, I tried to shoot a bird in a tree almost directly above where I was standing. My 55-250 simply didn't have the reach to get the bird close enough to be able to identify it.

When I viewed the shots, although I could clearly make out the feather definition in my view finder, all of the shots were blurry. I shot at 1/500, and let the ISO and f-stop default. The bird was a bright orange in the late afternoon sun, but it wasn't yet the golden hour, the trees weren't glowing.

It turns out that year bird appeared much larger than it actually was, because it had fluffed out it's feathers against the wind. It was singing up a storm, and was being answered by another bird in the distance. The call was familiar, but with the bright orange coloring, I couldn't place it.

Well, when I enlarged the shot in my windows editor, it had a distinctive red beak, and some black around the eyes. My strange looking bird was a male cardinal.

I only use Windows editor for the first pass on my shots, to quickly scroll the shots larger, looking for clarity, and move the clear ones into a "Selected" folder for that photo shoot. Then, I use Photo Shop to actually do my editing.

But the Cardinal shots further illustrated my need for a longer range lens, and I know that I should have hauled out my tripod, but I was shooting in a fairly busy parking lot, and a tripod would have placed me in the middle of the traffic pattern for too long.

I should have boosted my shutter speed up even more, but hindsight is always 20/20. I will try again in a few days, because it is likely that the pair is nesting in the trees behind the bookstore.

Most of the people you mention have invested time like most other people never realize. Some of them have spent entire days sitting and waiting for one chance, one shot, one brief moment of decision. Your assumptions are grossly underestimated with the exception of the duration of a bird's roost. With hours of preparation and more hours of waiting those "few seconds" could result in an award winning shot, or a cover story in NatGeo. The idea that digital is instantaneous gratification in a fantasy. Photography, like everything else worthwhile requires major investments, of money, of effort, and of time. The more invested, the more profited. One last item that has to be part of the equation: LUCK! If your goal is to photograph an eagle, first thing you have to do is.......... find an eagle! If you can't find one, the rest is incedental.