By John Siskin
Just a couple of weeks ago I evacuated my home, as the fires here in
California got pretty close. This was a pretty uncomfortable experience for me, and this isn’t the first time. While I could talk about the emotions of leaving home, I would rather write about taking the important stuff.
The last time I had to evacuate I had a studio in another part of town,so I did not have to evacuate the business, just the personal stuff. Ilearned that first time that it is best to just grab drawers that are already full of clothes. This is quicker. And this time I started by grabbing the filling cabinet drawers full of my personal negatives and transparencies. The problem here is that each drawer weighs close to one hundred pounds. Before this happens again I am going to have to find a different way to store the negatives so that they are easier to move. I know that many people will tell me to digitize my film, and I have digitized a lot of it. But I would still want the negatives. I still do traditional printing, and there may be better ways of digitizing film in the future. Besides my negatives are my life’s work.
I also grabbed cameras and strobes so that I could continue to do
business. I grabbed the computer and the hard drives. It doesn’t
surprise me that I made some mistakes here, but I made one huge
mistake. I forgot some of the chargers for the various battery systems.
The strobes aren’t much good if you can’t charge them. I also forgot
one of the lights I was using for an ongoing job, and I had to go to
this job the next day.
Well my wife and I got to go home the next day. Everything is ok. The
fires were put out less than a mile from my house. Between earthquakes
and files I need to think about the next time.
 Leaving Home © xJohn H. Siskin All rights reserved |
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