it's a good thing. . .

" I invented 'It's a good thing' before you were even born." ~ Martha Stewart

 oh my gosh, what a week. the lose of my external hard drive has certainly "driven" home what is important to me about photography and why i so love this art form. it has given me a reason to really stop and think about so much. not only getting a firm grip on organization but more importantly why i take photos in the first place. i have spent hours over the last few days thinking about nothing else, and in the process i have been able to really sort out  what the art of photography means to me; why i am so driven to capture the world around me, and what i expect from the process.  i am lucky that i have taken the time, when my camera card gets too full, to take it to Costco and for just a couple of bucks, make a backup disk. i could do this at home, but i love the little thumbnail photo they give you of everything on the card. all the cd's are in a box and i have started sorting them for real now. 

the thumbnails of all the photos i had uploaded into my lightroom catalog, those i edited and those i kept just in case, are still there, the source however is gone; but if i want to recreate something, i can do it easily enough. and believe it or not the whole ordeal has helped me to understand a little bit about what kind of photographer i am and as Martha will tell you, this has been a good thing. because it is not the photos like these of the beautiful cable bridge at night which crosses over the Columbia that upset me, but rather the ones of the light streaming into the cabin at the lake as the sunsets, or the ones of the whole family and the dogs, walking ahead of me, as always, and of course the silly photos of the three of us on the beach, these upset me. it was not the photos from from the professorial photographer at my son's wedding, but rather the behind the scene ones i took over the whole incredible weekend which hurt. but i have not lost them forever, and i am lucky i have them all on cd's. and now as i take the time over the next year or so to move them slowly into my lightroom catalog i will revisit them and see them with new eyes and who knows what i will see now. i think it will be fun. 

this loss along with finishing up Eight Girls has really given me much to ponder this last week. i can tell you i will be printing more, even if it is to stick them on the fridge. also, i am so glad i have taken the time over the last year to make several books from paper corerie because i now have a book for ever special event over the last year; quick, easy, beautiful, short and sweet. and i am also glad, that i took Xanthe's time capsule class and made several short time capsules over the last year and am now signed up for her journey  class. and just a few months ago i started to fill one of our wall with so many photos. i call it my love wall and the frames don't match, and the photos are not perfect, and the layout, well let me just say Martha might not approve. but you know what? every time i look at it i smile. i will be adding more to it for sure now, filling our home with this simple art.  

today there will be some baking while they watch the Seahawk game. and he has still not given up on the drive. but in a way, i am glad it happened. . .  because good things are going to come out of it i just know it. 

happy weekend, 
xxoox