Client Appreciation: Macie Senior Portraits

Here's another Alma, Wisconsin photoshoot!

Have you ever had a session that felt like Murphy's Law was happening with every single thing within the session? That's kind of how this session went. My client, Macie, was happy with her pictures and the process, but technology also turned against me with this shoot.

Let me just say, I'm happy my client was happy, and I'm happy it all worked out in the end, but man! Some tears were shed. So, Macie! I appreciate you and your positive attitude through everything that happened!

​This image on the left was actually taken at a different time than all of the images below... for reasons I could not control. Again, Macie, thank you for being such a positive trooper!

So now you're probably thinking, "What the heck happened??" Well, let me tell you!

Technology errors are the digital photographer's nightmare.

• We need our cameras to not just die in the middle of a session (yes, this has happened to me, thank goodness I had a second camera)
• We need our SD cards to not just decide they no longer work. Sometimes SD cards will say there is no space on the card, even if there is nothing actually on the card. And then it doesn't let you take pictures. This is why I carry three SD cards now.
• We need our camera batteries to not short out. You know how when your phone gets old it doesn't hold has much charge? Same thing can happen to camera batteries. Always carry a spare.
• We need our computers and all of the programs to continue working so we can edit the images.

This last bullet point is what failed me with Macie's Session. We had taken the photos below, and they were BEAUTIFUL, high resolution images, and then my computer just fried. My external hard drive had fried about a month prior, and then my laptop fried before I had replaced my external, so everything I had saved just went... poof. Bye. Gone. I was devastated.

I had already post-processed these images, and had uploaded them to Facebook, which is how I have the ones below. However, as anyone who has downloaded an image back to their computer from Facebook knows, the quality just isn't there. I did my best to save them, but it was clear - we would have to take a new picture. That's how the one at the beginning of this post came to be!

So let's talk these photos! 

The first photo that we took in our secondary session was shot on a piece of railroad track that is no longer being used which sits off to the side of the active tracks in Alma, Wisconsin.

The rest of these images were shot in Winona, Minnesota during her first session. The left two images were shot alongside an antique store in downtown Winona, and the right two images were shot in the Lake Park. We had a lot of fun during the session, and I really enjoyed editing the images. I'm still sad I don't have the originals anymore.

I learned my lesson the hard way. ALWAYS back up your files!