What Have I Been Dealing With This Week?

What a CRAZY week!

Like many in the Chicago area who got hit hard by storms last Thursday, our home was without electricity for three days! And to make matters worse, our home had six inches of flood water in the family room, utility room and washroom too! Our entire neighborhood was hit hard and many families were in just as much trouble as us. We could hear the sound of portable gas generators running all day long.

We lost a lot of items to the flood and now we need to contend with the probability of mold growth. Most likely, we will need to replace our flooring as well as walls...

Because of this disaster, I am running slightly behind in my Photoshop work, but I'm still covering my weddings!

As I was busy photographing a wedding last Friday (see Sunday's post), my in-laws all pitched in and helped us clean up the house. Without their help, we would still be dealing with this flood. Our neighbor helped us as well by bringing over his portable sump pump and we borrowed electricity from a neighbor across the street who luckily did not lose electric power.

So we have been living in a totally messy house for the past week since all that was downstairs is now upstairs trying to dry out. It's not fun.

On a brighter note, I spent the entire day today in a training class to improve my skills with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Scott Kelby, the president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and also the world's number one selling author of computer training books (or something like that) was the instructor.

Lightroom has become a major part of my photography workflow this year and with this training, I should be able to work even more efficiently. About 500 people were in attendance at this training with many from out of state. It's nice to know that so many professional photographers took a serious interest in improving their skills. That's proof again that continuing education is vital to success in this industry. It takes hard work and dedication to continuing education to keep our skills sharp on both the photography end and the post production computer end. This benefits not only us, but also our clients as well.