A Really Quick Hit Monday, Really Old Photographers, And "Crashed" Hard Drives

Good Morning Everybody,
Sorry for the much later than usual post today. Our ISP is experiencing technical difficulties and we were unable to get online. I'm actually signed in on my nifty little Verizon USB modem as I type. Anyway, on with the show. Whew!!! What a weekend. We started last Thursday and wrapped late yesterday - every pixel in my body was crying out for a digital Advil. This morning at the gym my knees were protesting the cross trainer. But, no problem, because my blogging fingers were ready to go.

The best quote of the week came from the mother of my bride this past Saturday. First of all, let me say it was truly an honor to be photographing my bride this past weekend. Why, because I had photographed her mom and dad's wedding 30 years ago. I remember sitting around with one of my early mentors in the early 80's.

We would sit around til late in the evening talking about weddings - how the technology had changed (flash bulbs then to electronic flash in the 80's), how the equipment had changed (from 4x5 Speed Graphics to Rollies and Hasselblads), how the product itself had changed from B&W to color. I could not help but think one thing when my seasoned mentor looked me straight in the eye, pointed to a framed wedding portrait on the wall, and exclaimed, " Do you see that picture, I did her mom and dad's wedding too." My only thought was, "Boy, you must be really old!

Here I am now in the exact same situation - photographing the wedding of a child whose mom and dad I photographed years earlier. Actually this is the forth time in my career that this has happened. You know, I don't feel like and old guy. I still get a kick out of photographing my weddings. I still go a "million miles and hour" to get all the images. But the main feeling is this - it is quite an honor the family bestows upon you with the request to photograph the second generation in the family.

Some readers know what I'm talking about about, and I hope the rest of you if you stick with it long enough get to experience getting that phone call for such a request - it is a darn cool feeling. That's a shot of all 4 of us with the bride - Nicole and her photographer's entourage. Left to right - Marc, Steven, Nicole, the old guy, and Damien. So back to the quote - I get to the bride's home and am greeted by mother of the bride. We talk a little about she and her husband's wedding of 30 years earlier as I get the gear ready. Then she lays it on me. She says, "Nicole (the bride) told her bridesmaids that she was having the same photographer that her mom and dad had."

Apparently, the bridesmaids responded with the quote of the week, "You're have the same photographer as your mom and dad! How old is this guy!!!" I got a great "giggle" out of it and proceeded to introduce myself as the really old photographer. We all had a good laugh. And even this really "old" guy got some great stuff. That a peek at today's lead image - love it and so did the bride and her mom.

Wait, there's more to this wonderful Monday morning. I'm usually up bright and early to get a start on the blog, but no Internet, so that wasn't happening. I had cards to unload for the weekend - about a "gazillion" - dare I say it - RAW files, and was checking drive space, network connections, etc. What I found to my dismay, was one of our system's computers was down.

At first, I thought we lost a hard drive over the weekend. I could reboot the computer, but after the initial start up screen, all I got was a blinking cursor in the top right of the screen - nothing else - just a blinking cursor. If the hard drive had failed, it would have read the famous, "Abort, Retry, Fail" or the even more catastrophic, "Can't read from drive c." I had neither of those messages, so I was thinking maybe I lost something on the mother board or something.

About two seconds later, I remembered I had the exact same thing happen at out Spring Master Class moments before the class was going to convene here at our home for our first day "Welcome Party." As luck would have it, Chris Barnes, one of the class attendees, says, "Oh, I think I can get you up and running and proceeds to pull out all the USB connectors form the computer. Sure enough, the computer reboots, we found the offending USB device, and all was good to go.

It turns out that was my solution this morning about 7 am too. The bottom line is this - as Chris says, "Whenever I have a problem like that, I pull all the USB connections first, restart the computer, and add them back in one at a time, rebooting after each one is reconnected, til the system stalls when the offending device is plugged in." Well, that strategy worked for me this morning.

Two hours later, I discovered that power supplies had probably "jiggled" loose on one of the back up drives making it the main culprit in my Monday morning system debugging exercise. Anyway, two hours later, all is well with the system. By the way, check out Chis' blog too - here is the link. Chris also blogged our entire Spring Master Class so scroll down for the entire story.