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Summer of 2013 coming back from the flood

It was a crazy summer 2013 for us. Our wedding and event season started out pretty great with a couple of proms and a few weddings. We figured we would take advantage of a rare free June weekend to celebrate a pair of birthdays on Cape Cod (both Tim and our daughter Tiegen share June 26).
It was rainy but we didn’t care: we were with family, we had lots of books, board games and internet service. But what we hadn’t counted on was just how much it was raining.
Our little village of Fort Plain, where our studio is, was hit with a devastating flood. The creek that runs through our town was seven feet above the previous high level. We had to leave our vacation and head home to assess the damage.
 Our basement was completely full of water and mud and water had seeped into our reception room. When the water receded we were left with branches hanging from the ceiling, inches of mud on every surface and no furnace or electricity. And if we thought we had it bad, all we had to do was take a look around the town. Many people lost everything: their cars, their homes, their pets.
But people are resilient and there are a lot of good, caring people in this world. Even before we were able to get home, friends had started helping us to get back on our feet. Within days strangers from all over New York State had started volunteering to shovel, carry buckets, and tear down in order to rebuild. Within three weeks we had our electricity back which allowed us to start shooting portraits again.
While it has been a slow process between keeping up with our regular work obligations and putting our business back to its pre-flood stage, we are looking forward to getting our new furnace hooked up just in time for our Christmas portrait and greeting card sessions.
I am also looking forward to blogging about all the wonderful wedding couples we worked with this summer and fall. Getting dressed up and photographing couples and families at one of the best times in their lives was great therapy for us as we struggled to put our studio back together.  As I told our first post-flood bride, “I am so happy to be here photographing such a beautiful event.” It was such a pleasure after all the not-so-pretty sights we’d been seeing.
While I know this is a photo blog, I just can’t bring myself to upload the photos that I took from that time except one Instagram image of the shovels outside the reformed church all cleaned and ready to go for another day. It’s there to remind me of all the good friends, neighbors and virtual strangers who cared enough to pick up a shovel, swing a hammer, provide a meal or give of themselves in many other ways to help us and our village come back even stronger. 

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