the L family
A little over three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of getting together with the L family (yes, that’s an L in the title…hard to tell, I know). They basically live right on the shore of the Big Blue River where it spills out of the Tuttle Creek Reservoir, so I knew we’d be in for a great location.
Unfortunately, the location was so great, it was flooded. So, instead of giving up, we headed upstream a bit to a little observation site and had a great time.
Melissa, here’s a little sneak peek that I know you’ve been waiting for.
Thanks for the fun session, guys! I’ll be in touch soon when the whole session is finished.
near tragedy
I just accidentally deleted four months of personal and family pictures.
I was trying to clean up our poor, almost full hard drive (we’re running at 91% capacity these days, mostly full of pictures) after finishing the processing of Nichole’s session. I backed up all the files twice (one for storage here, one for storage off-site), like I do with all my sessions, and then started deleting the files I no longer needed to keep on the computer: the RAW, digital negatives and massive Photoshop documents.
I right-clicked on the folder of the RAW files and selected “Delete.” The computer thought for a second, told me the folder was too big to put in the recycle bin, so did I want to delete it permanently. This didn’t strike me as that odd–RAW files are, after all, quite large. I really didn’t see any need for them in the future, so I said yes, go ahead and delete them.
I watched as another window come up and start listing the files as they were being permanently deleted, bypassing the Recycle Bin on their way out of my life. I noticed something odd in the hundreds of files that were flashing by: none of them should be there. These were the names of folders containing personal and family pictures, not Nichole’s session!
I hit cancel about as fast as I could, but it was too late: I had already lost about 10 GB of family pictures, equating to the last four months’ worth of photography. As a habit, I back up my photo sessions as soon as I get home and don’t delete the originals off the card until they are safely backed up in a number of locations, just in case. Not so with the family stuff, however. I checked the Recycle Bin, but there was nothing there.
Fortunately, from reading past forums and discussion board postings from other photographers, I know this is not the first time that someone has accidentally wiped valuable photos from their computer, so I started searching the internet for help. I knew that the files I had deleted were still on the hard drive, and that they would be until something else was written over the same physical spot on the disk. All I needed was a tool that would look past all of the signals that said the files weren’t there, and there they would be.
A very short time later, I was downloading Pandora Recovery, a free personal file recovery tool. I installed it to my external hard drive (so I wouldn’t be writing over any of the deleted pictures with the new software) and started it up. It immediately showed me where on my computer I could find deleted files, and there they were. This lovely, easy-to-use program very quickly recovered about 95% of my pictures. Some of them couldn’t be recovered because they had already been partially written on, but most of them are back, safe and sound.
Well, at least, they will be safe…once I get around to actually backing them up.
I keep thinking there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this…
nichole and the girls
In between the summer session and the fall semester on campus, my family and I went to southern California to visit family and friends. While there, we went down with my wife’s family to spend a couple of days in San Diego right on the beach.
Frankly, I’m surprised I made it back.
But, while we were there, I had a fun little mini session with my sister-in-law and her two beautiful girls out on the beach. My mother-in-law was my trusty reflector-wielding assistant, which was fun because it was probably the only time I’ve ever been able to tell my mother-in-law what to do.
Ha ha! Just kidding! (Hi Kathy!)
On with the show!
Oh, and if you’re confused at this point because she looks a lot like my wife, it might help if I explained that they are identical twins.
Sorry to make you wait for these, Nichole–I hope they were worth the wait! Shoot me an email (or just call your sister) if you have any questions.
amanda & casey + 2
This summer, some random lady stopped my wife at the library to ask her a couple of questions. She saw that our kids were the same ages as her kids, and she was desperate: she had just moved to our small town from Oklahoma for the summer while her husband got some job training nearby and she was out of her mind for something to do.
Fast forward to the end of the summer and we had to say good-bye to our good friends, Amanda and Casey and their two adorable kids. Luckily, before they left, I got to get them in front of my lens for a family session on campus up at KSU.
Their little girl was such a treat for me! She’s only 7 and already knows how to work it for the camera.
Their little 2.5-year old was missing nothing in the charm department either.
Mom and Dad didn’t do too bad either. 
They may look great individually, but all the magic really happened when I put them together.
And there’s plenty more where these came from. So much so that you might get just a bit sick of them in the next little while!
Thanks you guys! We miss you and hope everyone’s getting settled back in at home.
