Thankfully, both had a happy ending because both times Time Capsule saved the day. That’s the 2nd time that’s happened to me over the years, but that two times too many. I just clicked on it choose Restore, and in just a few minutes all my overwritten images were back. Sure enough - there was the original folder with all my images from Rome.

I simply entered Time Capsule (seen above) I scrolled back to a date in September of this year, soon after the workshop, and it displayed exactly how my laptop looked like back then, on that day in December, when it automatically backed up my laptop.

My wireless backup uses Apple’s wonderful Time Machine technology, where you can literally go back in time (in my case, all the way back to April 2018) and look at every backup copy it’s made of your computer or laptop, even if they were made months ago. However, here’s what I always felt made Apple’s Time Machine feature so wonderful (and here’s how it saved my butt): I know, you’re probably thinking, “But won’t that just have the same Rome Workshop folder of picks that would have backed up last night?” Yes, it would.

My laptop backs up every night wirelessly to an Apple Time Capsule (Apple doesn’t sell these anymore, so at some point, I’ll have to replace it, but for now, mine works like a champ). That’s when I remembered something so wonderful. That 1,000+ shots from Rome, my RAW originals, are gone forever. I went frantically searching through my memory cards, but no luck - My Rome workshop was in September, and so those cards were already. Last week, when looking for a particular photo from Rome, I noticed that I was missing a TON of photos, and I realized what I had done. Not only did I later overwrite all the Rome photos with the smaller set of just Picks, I then took that set, and replaced all my backups not realizing I was deleting about 1,000 images. You can already see what’s about to happen, but it’s worse than you think. I named both ‘Rome Workshop.’ That wouldn’t usually be a problem, except one folder had all the photos from Rome, and one had just my Picks. At some point, a copied just my Picks over onto an external hard drive - but (and here was my big mistake), I used the same name for both folders. Without going into a bunch of boring details, here’s essentially what happened I imported a folder of images from my Rome workshop trip onto my laptop.

Time machine backblaze