Today was one of those days when I was glad that my years of procrastination are behind me. In the old days, before I became more serious about photography, I rarely backed up my photos.

I relied on my “trusty” computer hard drives to store images until the day came when I was forced to make more space and move photos to an external hard drive. Now, I have a back up system and copies of all of my images on three drives.

Thankfully, when my Lightroom catalog chose to crash today and disappear from my hard drive, I had a recent back up to save me. It did take a few hours to redo some work I’d been doing yesterday on images for a client, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been if this had happened a few years ago.

While I was recovering my catalog and restoring my work, I was cheered to see that my friend and Arcanum Master A.D. Wheeler posted a new blog about our adventure at the Lonaconing Silk Mill in Maryland last fall titled “Help Save The Lonaconing Silk Mill.” His images are just amazing, and I hope you’ll take a few minutes to view them and read about the mill and how to help save this historic structure.

A.D. is an incredible photographer, and a visit to his blog The Explorographer is a rich and varied exploration of abandonment, art and adventure. So, I was inspired to return to my files and rework one of my images, which I’m grateful are still with me, safe and sound.