"I'm Sorry I Lost Your Photos"

Did you ever have that moment in college where you were typing a paper, maybe you went to get something to eat at the cafe or to get a coffee, and you come back and everything you had been sweating over was just gone? How about when you go to grab your phone for a selfie with a friend and you find that your screen is black and will not respond, at the worst possible time? Have you ever gotten the spinning wheel of death? The blue screen of destruction? Or how about the other weird shit our iPhones can do when they decide they are done working? In my industry we would call that corruption and its such a shitty topic. Its a word spoken in hushed tones between colleagues late at night on the internet when we are likely racking our brains trying to figure out where our precious work has gone. The word Corruption almost acts like a virus, we barely talk about it for fear it may spread to our equipment through the most unlikely and almost unrealistic channels. We see the posts of frantic photographers on the internet grasping at anything that will bring back their work, and think quietly to ourselves, “I am so glad that that isn’t me,” until it is.

For those of you who have been lucky enough to avoid corruption all together, either as a client or as a professional, let me fill you in. (Please be kind I am not a tech guru so if some of this is wrong its because it is how I have grown to understand it.) Corruption is a blanket term we use in tech related fields that essentially says information for a file (video or photo) failed to record correctly and is no longer readable by any of our equipment. If you’re thinking GEE THAT SOUNDS LIKE A NIGHTMARE HOW DOES IT HAPPEN, well first off, you’re fucking right. In the media fields we live in fear of this day, second off, we have no fucking idea. LITERALLY. There could be ZERO reasons why. It could be too hot, too cold, you moved too quickly, you bumped the table your stuff was sitting on, OR THE MEMORY CARD WAS HAVING A BAD DAY AND DIDN’T WANT TO COME TO WORK. Bottom line is that as much as we want to have control over this situation we often times do not. The only things we can do are back up as much as possible but sometimes that doesn’t even help.

This year was the best year of my life. I started a business, I got to work from home, I got to work for 30 beautiful weddings and 30 more people trusted me with their big day for next year. I traveled a lot for work and saw the most beautiful places. I got to pay off student debt and save money. I am so so happy to be doing what I am doing. However, this year I did have my first true experiences with corruption. It affected two clients of mine and I was devastated. Keep in mind what I am typing about is NOT something people talk about. Like ever. I hardly ever seen blog posts that talk about the real side of corruption, the emotional side, what its truly like to walk through this season. So it could be that when I post this tons of people will think it was the dumbest shit I have ever posted, but honestly I want this blog post to serve a purpose. I want to bring it out of the shadows. I want to talk honestly about it and tell everyone what I do to prevent it, but also write a love letter those it has affected and to those it may affect. So that when this happens (I have spent over 5,000$ to ensure that it won’t happen again but you know my luck I can never control anything) I have spoken openly and honestly about it with love. So here are the top things I want my clients, and clients everywhere to know about corruption.

1.) It is never on purpose. I say yes to all of my weddings because I love my clients as people. I want to love you guys and I choose everyday to love you guys. I want so fucking badly to serve you the best I can and to make all your dreams come true. I am doing exactly what I love to do and if I didn’t love it, I would honestly be in law school like I was supposed to be. I have chosen to do this and I would give literally ANYTHING to protect your memories. So if this happens please know that it has physically ripped my heart out of my chest. That may sound dramatic but that’s honestly how it feels. I would NEVER lose a clients photos on purpose, I don’t even know if that is a thing, but just know that I would never intentionally not deliver the photos I promise you.

2.) I have tried SO hard to prevent it. I have spent 5,000$ on equipment (hard drives, memory cards, card readers etc.), programs (Recovery softwares (yes thats plural), back up systems (yes that is plural too)), and I spend so many hours (which have a quantitative value because this is all a part of my job) backing up each individual image to multiple different locations. So here is what my back up system looks like. Because I don’t hide anything from anyone here is the actual process of what I do to ensure that corruption doesn’t happen.

a.) I shoot on dual memory cards so that the information reads twice when I am shooting. This is in case one memory card decides to take the day off the other one can catch what the shitty one didn’t.

b.) I don’t shoot on anything more than a 32 gig so that I have to replace them often. If I shot on like a 64 gig or something, I wouldn’t have to change as much but it also means that more can go wrong if there is corruption since its all just on one card.

c.) I come home and immediately back up to two hard drives right out of the gate. This isn’t a massive copy and paste situation either, I go through each individual card to make sure that I am getting every single photo so that sometimes for me takes hours but it gives me peace of mind that I have touched everything at least once.

d.) I then back up to one more master drive that is bigger and that never leaves my desk so that there is no chance of damage.

e.) I then have an online back up cloud drive that is backing everything up for me all the time on to a cloud. This is so that if something happens to the other three drives then I can pull from the cloud.

f.) I then make copies of the photos I want to edit on a different folder on my computer so that there is an additional copy of all the photos on my desk top for editing.

g.) When its all said and done I put all the photos in the online gallery so there is a final JPG edited version on line for you to download and then I copy the edited versions to all the drives aforementioned which also copies them to the cloud drive.

So at the end of the day there are a ton of different copies in a ton of different places and I am always looking for ways to make this better. I am constantly finding new drives that are better, and new programs that promise the world and then some. And yet corruption still happens.

3.) In both of my cases it has not been a full corruption. I have lost portions of the event but not the full event (knocks on all the wood throws salt over all the shoulders and says four prayers to four different religious figures that it doesn’t happen). This is still a super hard situation to play out though. We know there is a refund needed but how do we price the photos that may have been lost? How do we put a price on photos of you saying I Do or with your family? We want to give you all the money you gave us and then some but we know that we also spent time editing the photos we did get and as people we also need the money to live on no matter how much we want to just give it right back.

4.) As a client you will probably never forget an instance of corruption, and neither do we. We will see your facebook profile image or a post on instagram and that pain comes rushing back. Myself personally, I will relive the issue. I will do a quick search for something new that may bring your photos back, even if we have already settled the issue and parted ways with it. We hold the thought of maybe one day we will find a way to bring them back and make you super happy in a deep corner of our heart. We never just move on.

5.) We often don’t know what to say. So we may say the wrong thing. I look back at all the conversations I have had with clients and sometimes think I could have done it better. I could have done a lot better like not lose your fucking photos but sometimes we say things out of passion, fear, or sadness because we are so upset over the whole thing. So this blog post is all the things I wanted to say but couldn’t because I was scared or overwhelmed or just too fucking sad.

6.) This one is for the photographers and other creatives out there. When you see someone saying they have had a corruption issue, don’t criticize unless its with love and construction. WE ALL KNOW IT SUCKS AND WE ALL KNOW WE SHOULD HAVE DONE BETTER. We do we do. Those comments don’t help. Comment with a recovery software, or better yet, a kind message saying you get it and understand their pain.

7.) Please keep in mind that corruption does not invalidate all the experience that your photographer probably has. You might see an irate client that has used or is using your photographer and their anger and frustration is justified, but that photographer is likely trying to move heaven and earth to fix that situation. They are just mistakes. Mistakes like everyone makes in their job and it doesn’t mean they are bad at it or don’t know what they are doing. I have delivered close to 100,000 individual images this year and just as a rough calculation, my corruption issues prevented me from delivering 100 of them, so .001 percent of my photos were not delivered, just as a visible figure.

At its heart, corruption sucks for both parties. We, as the people who have been trusted with your big day, are destroyed when some part of our system fails. We want nothing more than to say I’m sorry thousands of times over to try and rectify the situation, because that is often all we can do. Hence the name of this blog post, but we know that it doesn’t fix it. As a closing thought, I want this blog to serve as the I’m sorry to everyone this has ever touched. To the client: If you have had your photos lost, I am so so sorry that you went through that pain. I can’t imagine it and I hope that NO ONE has to go through it ever. To the photographer: If you have lost a clients photos, I know your pain. I cried those tears, I spent all the money, I had all the anxiety and fear, I know it. I hope that you know that you tried your best and that is all you can keep doing.

I am scared to hit send on this post, but I feel a bit better putting this out there for the world. Remember almost all problems can be solved with love and compassion, all of them.

Until Next Time,

Mer.