|
THE CRASH OF 2013 (JULY 29, 2013)
If you understand how important my
photography is to me, then you will understand how stressful this past
week has been for me. Monday morning I was working on a photo in Aperature
3, the program I use for naming, adjusting, keywording, and organizing all
my photos, when suddenly the electricity blacked out in this
Bangkok neighborhood. When it came back on, when I brought Aperature back
up, the program had a completely blank slate, there were no photos and no
history of anything having ever been done on the program. Lost was all the
work I had done on 12,000 photos stretching all the way back to 1988. I
began struggling to restore my work, toiling for 6 solid days from 7:00
a.m. to midnight, and at times during the process it really looked like I
would get none of the information on my system back. One night I even had
a nightmare that clearly was a direct reflection of my feelings. I dreamed
that I was a meter reader reading gas meters on the wooded mountainside of
Bountiful, Utah. I parked the company car, and as I got out of the car my
eyes grasped a forest of vibrant autumn colors. I examined the scenery in
great detail, like I would any photographic prospect, and walked down the
hill a bit distracted. Another meter reader came along and reminded me
that I needed to get started on my assignment, so I hustled back up the
hill towards the car, but when I arrived at where I thought I had
parked it, the company car had seemingly vanished. I then began walking up
and down the streets trying to remember where I had parked the car and
feeling that I was now in trouble, both for misplacing the company
car, and for getting so far behind that I would not be able to finish my
work.
This has been such a stressful week that I will forever
refer to it as "The Crash of 2013". The good news is that I have
successfully gotten my entire system back on track and that in the process
I understand my whole system much better than I did before. The next time
something like this happens I expect to be much better prepared and I
expect things to go much more smoothly. The biggest plus that came out of
this is that I now know my restoration system actually works, and will
work properly, if I use it intelligently. |