Thursday, October 20, 2011

Weekend Reflections and A Reminder

A couple of weeks ago we went on a trip to Virginia to see our children and grandchildren. As we traveled up the curvy West Virginia Turnpike I saw this tanker truck ahead of us and reached for my camera. As you can see it is reflecting the road behind it.My hubby moved to the left lane so he could pass. With the speed of both vehicles I wasn't sure what I would capture as I pointed my camera and clicked.Upon downloading I was surprised to see that I actually captured the front of our Jeep even if it isn't very clear.
As this is a 'Reflection' post I want to 'reflect' on something important to all of us. As photographers whether amateur or professional our photos mean a lot to us. They are our link to experiences - tangible evidence to people, places, and things that have touched our lives. In this digital age they are always readily available. Unless. Unless a computer hard drive failure wipes it all away.
This past Sunday morning during some blog surfing my computer monitor went black with three words at the top - HARD DRIVE FAILURE. My heart was at my feet. The hard drive I was currently using was only a year and a half old. The photos I'd been meaning to transfer to my backup drive for months seemingly lost in cyberspace.
The good news - my wonderful dear husband worked hard and was able to retrive most of them to a backup drive. He hasn't tried yet to retrive anything else but nothing else matters. I was lucky and I know it. It was a lesson learned. This weekend I encourage you to 'reflect' on your own habits and back up a few of those precious files you might have been neglecting. Take it from me. The lesson I learned could have been a much harder lesson. Don't find yourself in my shoes. Just do it!
Posted for Weekend Reflections.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aloha my dear sweet friend. I hope this finds you well. When I read that you went to see the grandchildren I had to comment and say I've been bad not keeping up with you. I hope they all are good and the rest of the family as well.

Carletta if I may suggest something for a back up look into Carbonite. I think it's about 60.00 a year but it does it in the background and you have to do nothing. It's well worth it.

Aloha my friend. I love the photos :)

xoxoxox

T

Rose said...

I try to do better about backing them up...but find myself going months without doing it. I really, really need to do better.

George said...

I'm glad you were able to rescue your most of your photos. Hard drive failure is very scary. We try to keep copies of our photos on at least two drives.
I really like your reflections.

Kerri Farley said...

Hubby to the REscue! A Great reminder!

diane b said...

Great reflections and advice. I always keep saying I must back up my photos. I must do it! I hope you got all yours back.

Pat said...

Funny, I captured a shot like this once, too! I like when these trucks are nice and clean - especially when it reads "MILK" on the side!

Please pray for my granddaughter Lily - she is having eye surgery Monday. Read my post today. Thanks!

Sylvia K said...

Great reflections for the day and Great advice about backing up and not putting it off!!! Hope you and your family are doing well, Carletta! Have a wonderful weekend!

Sylvia

James said...

Very cool capture! I like the way the reflection is distorted.

Kim, USA said...

Wow you are too close from the truck. ^_^ It's my lesson learn too. Now I will transfer all my photos to my external hard drive but it says full already. Need to buy a huge gigabytes/titabytes hard drive ^_^ Thanks for the reminder ^_^

Acorn Reflection

Mimi said...

Lovely reflection (in both senses) Carletta.
I'm so glad your hubby retrieved most of your photos. cheap lesson, eh?

Gine said...

Reflet industriel ... très beaux chromes !

Inger-M said...

Great reflection shots, well noticed! I'm glad you were able to retrieve your photos :-)

s.c said...

Love this kind of shots and also love your header with round the bend. Beautiful shot and you wonder what is hidden there.

NatureFootstep said...

an unusual shot that I like a lot. :)

paul said...

Great shots and good advice!

Karen said...

Great shots Carletta.

I back up my photos on two extra drives.

Ann, Chen Jie Xue 陈洁雪 said...

it is not reflecting your car with you holding your camera?

Anonymous said...

Love those shiny tankers, that provide very cool reflections.

I've been designing computers for over 30 years and I have backups of my backups :-) I've been using a free program called 'puresync' to do my backups and it works really well.

Nature Rambles said...

Loved your photos! And back up is something I need to do more often...with the amount of pictures that I tend to take. Thanks for the reminder.

Gattina said...

Now, these are really amazing shots ! what a nice reflection in this truck !

Andy said...

You captured some really good reflections at high speed. Some advice on backing up photos. When you copy pictures from your camera onto your computer do not delete the camera photos until you have backed up the ones on the computer. Back up everything twice. Memory is cheap. I have had my backup DVD's go bad on me. Good thing I an extra backup.

hannah said...

Reflections, both visual and mental: good to remind us of the danger of losing our photographs. I am not too swift either when it comes to backing up.
Like your visual relections very much as well.

Phyllis said...

very cool reflections - isn't it fun to be on the look out for them?
I'm happy for you that you didn't lose everything. I know how important mine are to me. Thanks for the good reminder.

Scrappy Grams said...

love the reflections! thanks for the reminder!

EG CameraGirl said...

Cool reflection shots, Carletta!

A little over a year ago I lost four-months worth of photo. I back up to an external drive now and I do it regularly. It was terrible to lose so many photos!

Ebie said...

That's the benefit of being the passenger, and a very nice moving shot.

So far, I have not lost any photos. I have 2 external drives, one 500 and the other one, a terabyte.

It is a lesson learned indeed.

P.S. Do you back up your blog? I do once a month.

Gill - That British Woman said...

a very creative photo shoot,

Gill in Canada

Stephany said...

So glad your wonderful husband was able to save most of your photos! I have photos backed up to external drives, floppy disks and other computers but I'm still paranoid one of them will get corrupted.

Great photos of the semi!

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

Oh gosh. I'm reading this late but I will take the reminder to heart!