When you lose it all

Having been close to losing it all, I know the feeling well. It's a familiar feeling to me, as I usually go through life in the typical up and down nature of a rollercoaster. We all suffer from ups and downs, that's pretty much a fact, a fact of life in fact. But what happens when you really lose something. Especially when it's something you can't get back.

Most people will feel like crap over something that was stolen from them or taken away and usually it's a materialist item of some sort that can be found again. Either by replacing it or getting it back. But what about people who lose it all and can't get it back? People like the ones who lost it all in the fires in Victoria. While none of us can really imagine what it could feel like, I do believe when we lose something we all feel the same. It comes down to how close you held the lost or stolen item to you or to your heart.

You can lose your car or your house, and while you will feel bad or perhaps even worse, you would feel just the same about losing your collection of photos you have gathered throughout the years. Photos are great at recreating the memory of the moment and as humans we tend to hold on to various things in our lives. We're all guilty of it in one way, shape or form.

My question is, are photos really that important? When you talk about items that are irreplaceable, photos are the first thing that pops in to most peoples minds. There was a time and while limited, still out there when people used film cameras and got their photos printed. While the printing still happens, the format has changed and you can now get them printed yourself at pretty much any department store. Though there are some people like me who prefer keeping digital photos digital and only printing out the ones you fancy.

Thanks to computers and their ability to fail at any time, you are required to backup your digital photos. Hence creating a duplicate copy somewhere else, preferably not anywhere in the same building as your existing photos, but not a lot of people do that.

What if you found out all your digital photos were corrupt and the backups from which they came where also corrupt?

I discovered very recently that my photo library was corrupt. I then discovered soon after that my backup files for the same library were corrupt. Since my backups only go back 30 days I went straight to the first backup from 4 weeks ago to find that it too is corrupt, and the 30 versions that proceed it are as well. What does one do when this is the case?

Well, I'll tell you what I did. I laid awake in bed all night thinking of how I could get the photos back and I came up with this idea that meets me half way. Download all the photos I've ever put up online in this blog, my gallery, etc. And while they're not the full sized images thanks to being made more web friendly, they are still something that can remind me of good times from the past. Though the ones online are only about 10% of the collection.

I'm now okay with having lost my entire photo collection. But I don't think I'll be the same about my next collection of photos, they're all getting printed. Even the bad ones.