Everyday in this field, I have the opportunity to learn from myself, from others and from experience. Unfortunately, I recently learned a pretty important lesson. The hard way.
I haven't created a blog post in over a month, and it's not because I had no content. Trust me, we've been REALLY busy over here! We have SO SO much to talk about!
Fall is a super busy time for us, from weddings to mini sessions and everything in between, our days have filled up! My hard drive has filled up with designs and photographs galore. I was thrilled! I even began writing blog posts about the recent weddings in preparation to drop in photos when they were ready and to share with you all, when something horrible happened. My external hard drive FAILED.
Now, to the average person, this doesn't exactly seem like all that big of a deal. But to a designer/photographer, this is EVERYTHING. All of the photos we've ever taken: raw and edited, are on this drive. All of the designs we've ever done, even the not-so-great ones that we moved on and grew from, are on this file. Our business files, contracts, logos, yes you get it.. everything was on this drive.
Now, I won't get into the nitty gritty details of getting my drive fixed, because it's not all that interesting. I will tell you though, this process has been far from easy, cheap and quick. It has been over three weeks, and I still don't even know what will be recovered.
In the meantime, I've realized one very important lesson. SAVE YOUR FILES IN MORE THAN ONE PLACE. So, to all my fellow photographers, designers, artists and anyone for that matter.. PLEASE don't do what I did! Have two hard drives. Have a cloud storage system. ANYTHING!
I fortunately had a whole lot of files in my drive, my laptop and my memory cards. I've been able to create new designs and save everything I've done since in the right places. This hasn't effected my business going going forward. I have been able to salvage a ton of our recent work.
It has simply put other projects on pause: our calendar, updating our website portfolio, etc. I will have these updated soon and ready to go for you all! And in the meantime, I've gone out and purchased TWO new hard drives and a cloud storage system. You live and you learn, right?
Thank you to anyone who has been patient with us during this time. Thank you for taking the time to read what's been going on. And, of course, thanks for supporting us! This has given us time to reevaluate our blog/website setup and we are stoked for the direction we are heading! We will be posting frequently, from events and with any tips we come across, like this one!
Stay tuned, we have a whole lot of blog posts coming up! Talk soon.
Live creatively, friends.