Lost Images; Lessons Learned

Southeast Harbor, Maine (click to enlarge)
One of the "lost" images, reproduced from the JPEG
X-T2, 16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 33.2mm; 1/750th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

Trouble!  With a capital T!  You know the feeling when you are looking for certain images and you can't find them anywhere.  You know how it feels in your stomach when asking yourself, "what happened to those photographs?"  

As I was editing my images from a recent New England road trip, I was looking for some images I made in a specific location of some specific subjects.  I couldn't find them—anywhere—in my Lightroom catalog, on my laptop, on my 2 backup hard drives and certainly not on my memory cards since the images I was looking for were taken a couple of weeks and several hundred photos ago.  He is my story with some background.

On my recent 15 day road trip I practiced my usual image management system.  My established system consists of setting my camera for RAW + JPEG and using two memory cards in the camera with the second card serving as a backup.  At the end of each day, I import my images into my travel catalog in LIghtroom CC in my laptop, then back up the day's images to two USB 3.0 bus powered 1TB hard drives.  I then keep one backup hard drive with the computer in a backpack and the other hard drive elsewhere so all copies of my images are not in the same place.  Only then, when I have three copies of my images saved in two different physical locations do I reformat my memory cards.  Sounds pretty comprehensive.  I found a flaw.  Let me explain.

Southeast Harbor, Maine (click to enlarge)
X-T2, 16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 55mm; 1/600th sec. @ f/11; ISO 200
Cropped final image from the "lost" JPEG

The manner in which I catalog my images using LIghtroom CC is by location.  For example, the images I recently made in Maine would be filed under Maine, then a sub-folder for the place in Maine such as Acadia National Park, then a sub-folder for the year (2016), then a sub-folder for the date the images were made (09-28).  That way I can find images based upon first where I made them but I can also search by year and date.  It sounds complicated but it is not as Lightroom creates all of the sub-folders automatically except for the top two tiers (Maine and Acadia National Park, in this example).

Here is the flaw.  If I shoot photos in several locations in one day, I will make multiple imports.  Why?  Because I extensively keyword all of my images for stock purposes.  Part of the keywording is location as clients want to search by location when searching keywords for certain types of images they may want to license. For example, if I make images in Acadia National Park (continuing with the Maine example), Bass Harbor, Bar Harbor and Southwest Harbor all in one day, I will make four different imports, each by their location.  As I import the photos from each location, I keyword them.  It is easier for me to keyword all images from a specific location all together rather than go back and individually keyword images later.  However.....

Typical scene in a small Maine Harbor (click to enlarge)
X-T2, 16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 26.6mm; 1/800th sec. @ f/9; ISO 200
Another of the "missing" images I was able to recover

I found as I was going through my images from this last road trip that I couldn't find images I made on the the 28th of September in Southeast Harbor, Maine.  They were not in my Lightroom catalog in my laptop, either backup hard drive nor on my desktop Lightroom catalog.  It became evident that, as I was importing images from several locations that night, either I overlooked and/or forgot to import the images from Southeast Harbor, Maine. That has never happened before.  But there is a first for everything so I need to come up with a strategy for ensuring that this particular mistake doesn't happen again.

Here is what I have decided to do in the future.  I now will initially copy all of my images from the camera's memory card to a folder on my computer, then after all images are successfully copied to my computer will I import them by location into Lightroom from that folder.  This insures that all of my images are now copied onto my computer (either laptop or desktop) and I will leave them there until a future time, after the editing process so that I know that I've imported every one of them. That should negate the issue of feeblemindedness that I sometimes practice at my advancing age.  Hopefully!  LOL

Tools of the Lobster Trade (click to enlarge)
X-T2, 16-55mm f/2.8 lens; Cropped from "lost" JPEG

There were only about 20 images, none outstanding but still licensable for stock purposes, but I knew that a few of them were interesting and I was lamenting losing them.  I started to wonder if possibly the images could still be recovered from my memory card even though I had used it extensively over 5 subsequent days, made over 1000 additional images AND reformatted that card at least 7 times since I made the missing images.  The answer turns out to be YES! There IS a happy ending to this story.  I was able to find the JPEGS (I couldn't recover the RAW images but Fuji's JPEGS are so good that it really doesn't impact image quality in this case) and all look very, very good.  I will be able to work with them just fine.

I realize that when one reformats a memory card, the reformatting doesn't erase the contents, just the "table of contents" so it appears the card is empty and the space can be over written with new content.  I was counting on that methodology to see if my images could be recovered.  But I also knew I made many, many images and the area where the lost images resided on the card could have been one of those areas which had been overwritten.  The card in question is a Lexar 2000X 64gb UHS II SDXC card, which works very well in my X-T1 and X-T2.

What image recovery program did I use?  I used a copy of Lexar's Image Rescue 5, which a free copy was included for download with the last Lexar card I had purchased.  I am impressed, to say the least.  In fact, the software recovered 1745 images!  Hard to believe but I'm convinced this software (Lexar) and this card (Lexar) work very well together.

Lesson learned:  Not only does one have to have a comprehensive plan to manage one's images, but it is also important to look for flaws and unintended consequences in one's plan, then ensure you check and double check your procedure before moving on.

In this particular story, there is a happy ending!  Thank you Lexar!

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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