PRINT THOSE PHOTOS!

I think the greatest reward and the best happy feelings I get as a photographer is when people let me help them print those wonderful family photos.

It breaks my heart when they sit on the computer…. okay perhaps they are on Facebook for a while, but I am all about creating and saving memories.
I guess this is what happens as you age and spend hours pouring over saved artifacts in your fathers treasure box after he is gone.

I want all the good feelings to flood back…..remind me of the important things in life.

Hard drives crash…… I know. Been there done that. They do. And cd's do not last forever.

But family portraits on the wall or in a book filled with joy and happiness bring pleasure now and in 10, 20, 30.. 50 years. They remind us of the happy times in our lives. They keep us focused on the values and the people we hold dear.

This is the Walker family above. I absolutely love this large family portrait - and so does the Walker family. Pam had me put together 8X8 books of their fall family shoot - one for each of the children for Christmas. Pam said the silence in the room Christmas morning as they each carefully looked thru their books was palpable. Here in their hands was their own reminder of the people who were most important to them. They loved their books.. and their Mom for giving them these memories.


Do you have a favourite family photo? It makes you sigh when you look at it?
Is there a special event you want to preserve and remember for years to come?
Get it printed!

This is Ashley - her Mom wanted to preserve some beautiful photos of her blossoming teen doing what she loves to do most - dance! We went down to the river at sunset and created a gorgeous memory of this special time in her life.

Canvas?

frame it

metallic print

put it on the cover of a coffee table book….

but print it.

You will be so glad you did. If only I could capture the joy my clients express when there finished treasures are delivered. BIG SIGH! :)

Thinking about a special git for someone?

The ways to display your pride and joy are endless….. give me a call. Click "contact" above….. most of you know where to find me. :)

Really I love preserving memories! I am busy putting a book together with photos of Norah and Eva taken in 2013. (oh my there are a lot of them and I love them all!) I hope it will be a treasure they will open in years to come. I envision them pulling it off the shelf in moments when they feel like reminiscing. Or turning to their special book in moments when they just need to be reminded how loved they are.

Good to the Last Drop!

There is something really good about a bowl of cheerios and blueberries after your bath and before teeth brushing and story time.
Moments at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Pianists

There are a lot of finger prints on my piano.

Oh well…..

Fun at Grandma's

The girls got into the dress up trunk today. :)

Just one of those days

My Mac is running brilliantly.
My Pegusus R6 external hard drive is NOT!
I have spent about 12-20 hrs trying to fix it in the past three days - lurking in chat rooms, downloading pdf manuals, trying everything and keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't crash my system.
Getting crappy response from the pegusus customer service. Had to get nasty last night - the fellow finally said he would send it up line - well yeah! In two days he told me everything I already knew and told him. sigh…….

So I am reading more and spending more time in the kitchen. And working too (not photography).

And babysitting, lest you think I am idle!

And thinking maybe I should give up this computer stuff, camera, photography, 365, Facebook photography page, web site, blogs technical stuff and the gear - oh all this gear I keep up to snuff….

I could just spend more time in the kitchen being creative  and then…
hang out at the gym to make up for it.

I wouldn't have to work my brain.
Just some thoughts.

I might get the floors vacuumed too.
Maybe even a bathroom washed.

Maybe a bathroom renovated.

Sigh……

How did I get so deep into all this stuff. I am a grandmother for petes sake!!

It is not fun anymore. Well, not this week.

I think I will run away to Hawaii…….

Whiffin Spit

Say that fast three times. :)
Sooke, Vancouver Island
Lots of rain and wind here… but no snow.
Took Tanis on a long walk on Whiffin Spit this morning and then out to lunch. Yes, I took lots of photos of her. :)

Winter

Darn cold but awfully beautiful.

Crash Plan

There is nothing more boring and awful and NECESSARY than backing up your computer.

- Matt Buchanan, Buzzfeed

I want to share a little gem with those of you who have tons of photos on your computer, never print them and worry you may loose them one day if when your computer crashes. It will crash one day - computers do that. If you don't care if you loose your stuff, then no big deal. You need not read any further.

But if you have things - documents, photos, letters, that you would really be heartbroken if you lost them, well then this little blog post is for you.

Data - we all have it on our computers. I have data and photos that people pay me for. I can't afford to loose it so I back everything up to an external hard drive - maybe you do that too. But since I have to be  absolutely sure I don't loose stuff, I back up every photo shoot to two hard drives. One giant hard drive and one smaller one that carries my shoots from the past month. I have had external hard drives get corrupted and loose data. It happens. It's just a matter of time.

So to save your data from the eventual computer crash, you save it to an external hard drive..... that sits on your desk.
But one day while you are out of the house, someone breaks in - they take your computer and hard drives. or heaven forbid, you have a fire, or flood.

Houston, we have a problem.

It's gone! All of it is gone!

For a few years I have always saved my second hard drive to a different location - this is a pain to store it and retrieve it every time I want to add to it so I tend to leave it on my desk more then I should. I bet you do too. You have an external hard drive you back up to sitting on your desk right? ;)

Okay, so now what? The two external hard drives might get stolen, burnt or corrupt.

Here is the solution.
Back up to an external server on the internet - people with GIANT hard drives that keep your photos and data safe. Ah, the cloud!

I researched several options, read the reviews and settled on CrashPlan. It was easy - I started with the free trial plan and began backing up all my files. It should take the average person about 4 or 5 days to get it all backed up. It just works away in the back ground.

But since I am not average and I was backing up ALL my clients files (going back 5+ years), it told me my backup would be complete in 3.5 months!
Yikes.  The guys at CrashPlan were great in figuring out how to speed this up. And I learned a lot about upload and download speed. I obviously didn't have enough upload speed and wasn't my cable company happy to help me out there. ;)

It took me over 2 months to back up my data from 5 years of shooting, but I had 1.4 Tbs of data. Thats 1400 Gb, thats 140,000 Mb - thats a LOT of data. Unless you are a photographer or videographer, you likely don't have that much to back up. But for $6 a month you can know that no matter what happens your photos and data are safe.

And one day you may actually print some of those photos. That's a whole other blog post coming soon. :)

I had some real struggles in the beginning because it was a lot of data to back up - I had to up my shaw account for faster data transfer - I discovered I had THE slowest and cheapest plan with shaw - so slow and so cheap they hadn't offered this plan for years but we were grandfathered in. (how long have we been with Shaw Cable? Since the nineties - remember @home?) The benefits are, I now upload clients photos to my web site in seconds and not 10 minutes. The down side is yet another business expense!

Where IS my accountant?

The tech people at Crash Plan are fantastic! Responded the same day to my requests and walked me thru issues I had with time machine and other settings to speed this up. But when all the data was there I gave a big sigh of relief and now my computer constantly backs up the days photos to the server where they are as safe as I can make them.

So all this to say YEAH for Crash Plan - may I never have to retrieve my photos from them..... but should I have major issues, my photos are safe.

Boxing day my hard drive crashed - problems with these fancy fast fusion drives on the new iMac. Yes even Macs can have an issue. We had to wipe everything off the hard drive, reset the fusion drives and load it all back up again. No worries! I knew that worst case scenario the drive was damaged and we might have to get my data back from CrashPlan - but it wasn't so it was an easy reinstall.

Peace of Mind.

Now go check out CrashPlan. If you don't want to spend the monthly fee then download the free plan and back up to another computer that is not in your house. The options they offer are hard to refuse and the peace of mind is worth it!

and I didn't get paid to say any of this..... just passing on something good to all my readers.

BTW - if you want a discount click HERE- feel free to use me as a referral. I don't get a discount or kick back - I pay regular rates. Only new subscribers get the discount. Just let me know…… unlike that person from Regina who just used my account as a referral/gift subscription and didn't tell me……I know who you are :)

Saskatoon Newborn Photography

Photographed this beautiful newborn in December.
He reminded me of my 9 pounders. :)
Solid little fellow with a sweet, content disposition and a very happy big brother.
VERY kissable!!

I have had a very relaxing three weeks off of photography (other then grabbing some Christmas pics of the family) and I am inspired again.
Perhaps that is why in a weak moment I signed up for the 365 again. :)

Bath Time

To all my faithful Blog followers I have resurrected the 365 Blog for year four…….
Click HERE or on the 365 tab above and put me in your Feedly. :)

The girls were here for an overnight New Years eve and we had a whole lot of fun.
Eva has more hair then the rest of us put together!