Keeping My Cool!!

I haven't blogged much this fall.  Shortly after I posted the flower pictures that you see in the previous post, my computer hard drive took a nose dive, taking my images with it.  Of course all my business stuff was safe and sound, but my personal images were not all safe and sound, and that broke my heart.  There is a good chance I will recover everything, but some of the images that are still lost are those flower images I posted.  My computer crashing taught me a lot of lessons that I was learning about external hard drives, keeping everything backed up in two places, and being very, very organized.  I was pretty organized, but I have learned that it is almost impossible for us photographers to have everything backed up at all times.  We have so many photos in different stages of the editing process at any given time.  I was just a few hours away from saving these images and the other ones from the fall and Christmas of 2012, when the computer crashed.  If it had given me just a few hours, I would have had everything backed up.  Isn't that awful, just a few hours.  Business images are always edited and out the door within seven days, but I was savoring those personal images, because they were taken at a very special time for our family.  Now I know to edit them, and then savor them from a safe place.  Yes, I learned that lesson.

Luckily when I reloaded all of the many memory cards that I have, almost all of my 2013 images that weren't edited, were on those memory cards.  That was fun for me, to know that I actually had so much of my work backed up in a second location.  It was good to know that my organization saved so much of it.

So now I am editing like crazy.  Not only do I want to get to my personal images edited, get them all tucked away safe and moved into photo books that the kids can enjoy, I have business images from several family photo sessions, a newborn session, two weddings, a funeral and yes that does sound like a movie title, to edit.  It's all great fun (except the part about my hard drive.)  I love photography.  It is my calling in life, to document the events, births, families, weddings of those that hire me to help them document their life's events.  I love faces.  I love people.  I love showing people themselves.  Yes, a photograph can really show yourself and your life to you, in so many ways.  I love that aspect of what I do.

The images that are included in this post are some of those retrieved from my memory cards.  If you step out our front door and travel a few yards down the road, you will find the back yard that my family and I love to play in.  My husband and I took up walking, among other forms of exercise that we are doing.  He is in excellent shape.  I am working to get back to that.  I've had five babies, so I take a bit longer to rebound back.  At least that is what I'm telling myself.   Anyway, these images were taken on one of our morning walks.  My favorite time to walk is when it is misting a soft rain outside, or on mornings like Thanksgiving morning, or Christmas morning.  It is so peaceful out there at those times.  Not many other people are around and you practically have the whole place to yourself.