California Wildfires Hit Close to Home

Firefighters continue to try to contain and control the  California wildfires. Some of the images emerging from this year’s wildfires are both intense and captivating. We sit down with member Melisa Gonzalez of Imagine Images who shares her hauntingly beautiful photos with us as well as her business plan to keep her clients’ images safe if a natural disaster hits.

Hi! My name is Melisa Gonzalez. I live here in Southern California and have lived here for the past 28 years of my life. Same house in fact !I’m a wedding photographer and own Imagine Images but I also love to photograph a bunch of different kinds of photography. I just love photography in general.

The fires here have always come and go but this one, in particular, the “Holy Fire” is very dramatic and shocking to see. It has spread across the north side of Lake Elsinore and going towards Corona. It’s very impactful to see how close they have gotten to homes and to see everyone evacuating and taking their personal belongings out of their homes, including their pictures. When these photos were taken there were planes dropping fire retardants and people watching everywhere. At night time the fires were even more dramatic with the flames just glowing and the fires looking even madder than ever!

It’s crazy to see especially so close to home about 7 miles from my house. Thankfully, it looks as if they have managed to control the fires. Especially the ones around the homes. Now we just hope for the best and we cannot be more thankful for all the hardworking men and women who have helped to fight these insane fires! They are truly amazing!

As a wedding photographer and business owner, I automatically think about pictures. It’s important in today’s world to make sure you secure your photos in a number of different places in case a natural disaster hits. I save my images on two different hard drives (one is stored at a different location) as well as upload them to cloud storage.
Printique is also key to keeping my images safe. I upload my images and store them in a gallery.  I have personal photo galleries as well as client galleries with unlimited storage and I don’t have to pay a monthly fee to store them like other cloud services. Although it’s a lot of work to archive photos, they are one of the most important items we own. They are sentimental and part of our legacy. It’s smart to have a plan not only for clients’ photographs but your personal ones as well in case a natural disaster occurs. Once you get a system down, then it becomes a natural part of your workflow.
Thank you, Melisa. If you would like to see how others in the industry back up their files, you can click HERE.