A few shots from a late night walk in downtown Ottawa.

On Friday, February 3rd, Lorraine and I celebrated 33 years of marriage.

We spent Friday and Saturday up in Ottawa. We had a terrific time.

The folks at the Fairmont provided us a complimentary upgrade to the presidential suite — a wonderful and unexpected treat. The team at the Fairmont always treat us so well which is part of the reason why we book into their properties whenever we can.

We had a number of events planned in Ottawa. We dropped by to say hello to the Governor General. Stephen was good enough to join us for part of the tour. He is such a Canadian guy that Stephen.

We then made our way to the Canadian Aviation Museum to check out all of the aircraft. First time that I had been to this museum. Thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon.

We dropped by the parliament buildings later in the evening.

The following day we spent the morning skating the Rideau Canal.

I still find it hard to believe that we have been married for 33 years. The time really has gone by so quickly.

I am a very blessed husband to have such a wonderful wife.

My Drobo arrived today.

I had to revisit my storage and archive strategy for my digital photography. With the growth in data from photography, I needed a more robust storage and archiving solution. The Drobo will offer me up to 16TB of virtual storage. And that should last me for a few years.

Hard drives fail

This happened to me on March 27, 2010. My primary hard drive on my primary computer failed. A catastrophic failure. A dead disk. Thankfully, my machine was fully backed up on Time Machine and it was remarkably easy to restore to a new computer without any meaningful data loss. Time machine had backed my data right up to the last hour.

Since that time, the growth in my digital photography has been dramatic and I had to move my photo library off the primary disk on my computer. Not enough storage on the internal hard drive.

Digital photography takes up a lot of space

Between Lorraine and myself, we can easily shot upwards of two or three thousand images a month. Off my camera, each image can take up to 25MB of space. As my oldest son tells me, I need lots and lots of the GeeBees. My digital images are all managed by Adobe Lightroom. I keep the catalog and the images on an external multi-terabyte Firewire drive. That drive is backed up to an identical external multi-terabyte Firewire drive which, in turn is backed up to a third multi-terabyte Firewire drive. The third drive is a RAID drive. The Time Machine backup of my computer is located on fourth external drive.

Very few people I meet have any form of backup in place for their computer.

Minimize the risk of data loss

Knowing that hard drives fail and then actually experiencing a hard drive failure highlighted the importance of backing up my data. Much of my life is captured in digital form through photos, recordings, and documents. I would like to keep those digital memories — particularly the photos — available for myself and my family.

The combination of external drives and the Drobo will help me minimize the risk of data loss by keeping the images on at least three storage platforms. Unlike prior years, I will have one of the storage platforms rotating to an offsite location.

One of my goals for the year is to scan all of our “paper” photographs. I really want to make sure that my children have digital copies of all of those wonderful moments in time. I would hate to do all of that work only to fall victim to a hard drive failure.

We make our way back home this morning. We enjoyed a wonderful break in Quebec — both in Montreal and Quebec City. Yesterday we did the long walk around the old city. The weather had warmed up to a relatively mild -10C. Warm enough that we could walk for several hours. Here are a few shots from the day.

We followed a walkway that led us up to the Citadel. Wonderful views of the St. Lawrence.

The Citadel itself is quite the encampment. I like this shot because it captures the sense of cold and isolation within a large and vibrant city.

We made our way over to the National Assembly. Lorraine and Matthew pose at the gates to the old city.

And here is a shot of the National Assembly.

The weather was warm enough to encourage passengers to try the carriages — although still too cold “pour moi”.

And a few shots from the old city.

To shoot outside and at night provided some interesting challenges. After a few outings, I thought about just shooting indoor shots — like the one above taken in the hotel lobby.

Obviously the first challenge in shooting outdoors in the freezing cold was how to dress.

In Kingston, we do not get the minus 30 Celsius wind chills. At least not very often. In this area, the cold is quite brutal. And I have hiked in the far north in very cold conditions.

I had a merino sweater. A Merrell outerwear jacket specially designed for hiking in cold environments. Insulated gloves and headwear. In short, every possible technology to endure the harsh winter climate. Even with all of that I could only stay outside for about an hour or so before things started to get difficult — primarily the fingers. Here is what yours truly looked like before heading outside.

And here are a few shots from the evening. First up is the hotel itself. The Chateau Frontenac.

Some street shots in the old city.

Lots of interesting architectural details in the historic buildings.

Matthew has had no choice but to jump in to the Quebec culture.

Although it was much easier to appreciate the food particularly when we arrived for lunch at Le Petit Chateau.

Chocolat chaud, soupe aux pois et les crepes. Crepes filled with maple butter. Incroyable!

We arrived at the Chateau Frontenac in the old city of Quebec. The city is beautiful and cold. Very, very cold.

The wind chill was hovering around -30C. Which made using a camera a particularly challenging task. During the daylight hours I kept the camera on a classic setting — f/8 and be there — as I was having a lot of difficulty rotating the command wheel to adjust my aperture setting. At night, I found a way to apply sufficient pressure to get the wheel moving. At these temperatures, I was not removing my gloves.

Here are a few shots from the day.

The Chateau Frontenac is a huge and imposing hotel.

Well appointed main areas like this one.

And this one.

There were no passengers on the carriages.

Numerous shops line the old city and each one is quite unique.

Even the inside of some of the shops show a bewildering array of product.

And a few night shots. Did I mention that it was cold? Really, really cold?

Kurtis Hough was shooting the Pacific Ocean with his Canon 5D Mark II at Cannon Beach in Oregon when a wave took down his entire rig.

That wave was fast. The folks at B&H Photo helped Kurtis out by replacing his rig without charge.

how to lose $2400 in 24 seconds from Kurtis Hough on Vimeo.