Wednesday, January 14, 2009


I'm excited to announce that my photo, Winter Window, is featured in a two page spread in the February 2009 issue of Popular Photography. I made this photo during the winter of 2006 after a dicey scramble up slippery and snowy ledges to achieve a view of Turret Arch framed by North Window during a snowstorm. It was well worth the effort!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

A Nightmare on Lightroom Street

I'm writing this at the end of a very frustrating Lightroom ordeal with the hope that it will save you from experiencing the same dilemma.

For the second time since I started using Lightroom I turned on my computer one day, opened LR 2.2 and my heart sank as the "This photo is missing or offline" error message sprang to life at the top of an image. I started checking other images and found that the entire catalog of images was "missing or offline."

I posted my issue on a Lightroom forum and began reading everything I could about the error message. In theory, it's an easy fix. In reality, it isn't. Even the Lightroom Queen (www.lightroomqueen.com) couldn't figure out what had happened. After exhausting every resource I could find, and spending several days in the process, I finally removed the entire folder of images and re-imported every image.

No big deal, right? Wrong! Doing so means that every edit I'd made to those images was lost. Gone. Ka-put. In the crap-ola. Starting from scratch, folks.

How could I have prevented such a tragedy? The answer is ridiculously simple - BACK IT UP! I always clicked "Skip Backup" each time I started Lightroom. As a result, I had no backup files that could be used to replace the corrupt files, saving hundreds of hours of processing work.

I have now set up Lightroom to ask me if I want to back up my files EVERY TIME I OPEN IT. Fine and dandy, but if you click "Skip" when the message pops up you're not doing yourself any favors. It is safe to say that I no longer click "Skip." It takes only a few minutes each time for the back up to be completed. Call it a good time to freshen up your stale coffee, use the restroom or respond to an email.

During my investigation into this issue I also learned a few interesting tidbits about LR. It doesn't like to be left open on your computer. When you're done for the day, close it. It also doesn't like it when you mess with your image files while it is open, unless you are working directly in LR. For instance, before you back up your image files to an external hard drive be sure to close out of LR. I now take it a step farther and do a complete shut down/restart before doing an external HD back up. Call me crazy. You wouldn't be the first.

If you never learn anything else from me please, please, PLEASE back up your Lightroom files uber-frequently. You'll be glad you did when LR informs you that your files are "offline or missing."