Rebuilding

Memorial Day weekend, Lindsey and I flew to Atlanta to celebrate our good friends wedding. As the photographer, I immersed myself in capturing their families’ joy when uniting around their love. After spending an amazing day, I packed up my photography gear at the reception and we drove our friends back to the Loews Hotel to say our congratulations and goodbyes. We parked in the secured hotel garage, near the lobby elevators and valet parking; we armed the car alarm. Although we made sure nothing was visible, when we returned a couple hours later, the back window of our rental car had been smashed out and all my hidden photography gear was gone. The crushing realization that many of the memories from the day were also stolen was horrible to bear. Since the thieves took my back-up drives, we lost images from throughout the weekend including other good friends’ family portraits and my gift of documenting the wedding rehearsal dinner. I back up images in case a memory card gets lost or a hard drive fails. But, despite our savvy and care with equipment all these years, we became crime victims. Even with backing up photo-shoots, I hadn’t anticipated that someone would take everything at once. We are starting a fundraiser to help get my business back on its feet more quickly. We have been working with the Atlanta Police, our personal and my professional insurances. Our insurers are debating who will cover what and the Atlanta police are deciding what to do about the guy in California who bought one of my cameras (tracked via serial number) from someone in Lawrenceville, GA. Yes, seriously. We’ll keep you posted on this intrigue. The details, forms, reports, CCTV video review (across two securities companies ‘guarding’ the garage)…The tax history for inventory tracking and purchase receipts…The raw loss, before depreciation is upwards of $15,000. It took years to build my system and it will take time to rebuild. We set a $6000 target to get replacement equipment needed for this busy summer season. My hope is that if the friends and family of Erin Ashford Photography each contribute $20-40, we’ll meet our goal. Thanks, in advance, for your generosity and support!