In which I crash and burn, plus Charlie — cohasset family photographer

If you had the misfortune to witness me lying in the middle of the road last week, deflated and ardently willing an errant meteor to target my limp and frazzled being, I apologize. It wasn’t pretty. If you were privy to my bleating at the poor Genius Bar guys when they delivered the bad news, I apologize. Again, not pretty. Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but when it fails, it fails big. My hard drive crashed last week, taking it with it a giant chunk of my peace on earth. All of a sudden, my screen went blank, and that was the beginning of forever’s worth of frenzied phone calls, trips to the Apple Store, desperate pleas for help from the Gods of External Back-Up-Drives.The dust has settled somewhat; I am the owner of a new and eerily empty computer, and the hard drive with practically my entire life on it is making a trip across the country to see if anything can be salvaged. The good news is that I do back up all of my RAW files as soon as I get home from a shoot, so none of my client’s images were lost. I do, (mostly, almost always, 99% of the time), back up the rest of my files pertaining to Lisa Gilbert Photography. The bad news is that the 1% of the time I didn’t was in the past two months, so I lost hours and hours and HOURS of edits. If you’re a photographer and you’re reading this, I’m sorry I just made you throw up a little bit. If you’re not a photographer, then just believe me when I tell you that once you’ve edited crumbs and milk mustaches off of the same kid’s face fourteen times, you really don’t want to have to go back in there and do it again. Plus: over 8000 mp3 files, all of my 2012 invoicing, my Photoshop actions (thank GOD for my amazing photo posse who helped with that), templates, and GASP! My divorce agreement. Sometimes: small favors.

If you’re a recent LGP client, then I’m hoping you got the email that explained what is happening with your files. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have such patient, flexible, and supportive people in my corner. I especially want to thank Calder and Erik, both of whom had not a snowball’s chance in hell at doing anything right as far as I was concerned last week. For their Teflon souls, I am eternally grateful.

And Charlie? YOU are the sunshine that I get to come back to after all of this gloom, and nothing could be better than that. There’s ALWAYS a rainbow after the rain.

I’ve been photographing Charlie since she was just a few days old and posed in the bookcase for me. She has always been a little treasure, and this past shoot was no exception. At the time of the shoot, Charlie’s mom Laurie and her dad Dave were expecting their second baby. I just heard this week that little Annie has made her appearance, so hopefully you’ll get to see her soon here on the blog. In the meantime, enjoy Charlie in all of her awesomeness. And don’t forget to back up.

Checking out what’s in mom’s tummy!

In the middle of the shoot, a lightning storm sent us running for shelter under someone’s porch. Once it passed, we went back to the beach where things were a little bit charged up!

I just love her face in these…

The real electricity, however, came in the form of perfect, perfect light, and a rainbow made just for us. Charlie definitely approved.

Thanks for hanging in there while things were a bit quiet on the blog. I promise not to lie in the road any more. Happy weekend!