Murphy's Law, Studio Work, and the Internet, Where Are You?

Ciao Everybody,

Today was meant to be a day roaming Tuscany by car, visiting the wonderful little Medieval towns, and just seeing the sights.  Unfortunately, Mr. Murphy was up a lot earlier than we were today and played havoc with our schedule the entire day.

Here's a bit of the back story.  We were under such stress with a humongous workload of projects to be completed before we left for our trip that as the departure date approached two projects did not make it to the finish line and I planned to wrap them up while we were traveling.  Not a good plan but the only plan we had if we were going to leave on time for our trip.

Anyway, I got one of the projects completed, getting my monthly newsletter out which happened late Thursday night.  The other was to edit and post my most recently photographed wedding.  This was the BIGGY.  I had over 5000 images to edit, tweak, and organize into their final presentation for my client.  I got a short start on the edit process before we left and then transferred everything to a hard drive so I could finish the job during our travels.

Challenge #1:  Slow Computers

I needed to work on my Sony Vaio laptop, not the rocket box I thought it was when I purchased it a few years ago.  Plus, it's screen is TERRIBLE for any kind of color correction.  Needless to say, it's all I had at hand so that's what I used.

LaDawn pitched in by waking early hitting the computer to finish the edit.  She completed a good bit of it along with some image tweaking, cropping and slight color adjustments.  I carried the baton the rest of the way early Thursday morning.  I got the show edited down to about 1600 images.  ( I know too many, but that is what it is.) The export from Lightroom 4 took nearly two hours - we grabbed breakfast and when we returned the export was complete.

Challenge #2: Getting the images online.

Next I had to get the images uploaded to More Photos for my client to view them.  Mr. Murphy's was laying in wait as I began the process.  I downloaded the software to my laptop, secured the best Internet connection I could, sketchy at best in rural Tuscany, and proceeded with the upload.  A half a dozen tries  and 90 minutes later still no luck.  I figured it was some kind of international Internet handshaking protocol that was hanging up the upload.  I decided to go to Plan B.

Plan B involved me uploading all the images into my Dropbox folder and then logging into my studio computer via GoToMyPC.  I figured once I was working on my studio computer all would be fine.  Three hours later I had all the images back at the studio sitting in my Dropbox folder on the studio computer.  Now it should be no problem to get them online.

Mr. Murphy stretched his internationally long arm across the big pond - I couldn't get them to upload from the studio computer either ;~(  What was going on?  I tried to upload from LaDawn's studio computer and still no luck.  The day is fading fast - by now it's 4:00 in the afternoon. (LaDawn is thrilled as you can imagine)  I called my buddies  at More Photos and asked them to help.  I quickly shared my Dropbox folder with Eric at More Photos and he guaranteed that he would get the images on line. He did and now all is good - with the exception of us losing a day of seeing the Italian sights.

Murphy Gets A Punch In The Nose

It's now about 5:00 p.m. when I get a call from Clay Blackmore, my fellow cohort for our Italian Workshop which kicks off on Monday.  He say they're heading to Siena to scope some locations out for the class.  Yep, we’re shooting part of the time in this incredible city. It turns out that we were only 45 minutes from Siena so we agree to meet Clay and Jeff at Siena - things are beginning to look up for the day in spite of the late start.

We spent the rest of the evening in beautiful Siena enjoying a few sights at night - very beautiful - and also sampling some fine Siena cuisine. 

It was late when we finally got back to our hotel at 11:00 p.m.  But, I have to say, at the end of the day Murphy was vanquished, all projects completed and we have the rest of the trip to look forward to being project free! Whew!!!

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Hey gang, that's it for be today.  I'll try to get another post up over the weekend to keep you up to date with more news and photographs.  See you soon.

Arrivederci,  David

P.S.  OK, a quick footnote. We've been here almost two weeks - the time is flying by - and I'm still on the same belt notch I started on in the beginning of the trip, in spite of eating and drinking Italian every day.  Uhmmm.... must be all be the walking ;~)