I sure hope all of you are doing fine and if you’re in the Houston area you did not suffer any adverse impact as a result of hurricane Ike.

I am finally back up and running after spending well over 1 1/2 weeks without power or internet service.  I suffered no damage to my home (thank God!) aside from a part of my yard fence coming down.  I managed to borrow a generator and have been powering my refrigerator, TV (and related items), a light, and a couple of fans with it.  Today, Wednesday, September 24 - twelve days after the storm - I finally got power and internet back.

I learned a few things from this experience.  First, my backup procedure worked perfectly.  All my images are stored on external hard drives - two of them.  I keep one at my home based office and one at an off site location.  I was able to keep up with e-mail through internet based interfaces - though I do need to update my on-line address book!

What I also learned is that a disaster such as this is very difficult to recover from.  As I’ve watched the news, I have seen those less fortunate and what they are going through.  I consider myself very lucky and hope all of you were also.  If so, I encourage you to donate to one of the relief funds that have been set up by many organizations - and check with your employer for any matching funds programs.

Many businesses will suffer from this storm and as a result many couples will find themselves in search of new vendors.  If you are one of those, please contact me and let me know so we can work together to meet your needs.

I had the amazing opportunity to participate in John Michael Cooper’s (www.altf.com) “Pay it Forward” project (www.roadsidefamilies.com) and when it came time for me to pay it forward I chose Lisa.

I’ve known Lisa for a while now but her story was exactly what this project is meant to correct.  She had not had a profesional family portrait in years - I think she mentioned Cody was about six years old!  Cody is off to college.  Matt is off with the US Army as an infantry scout.  How could I not do this session?

So, here are a few from the session.

Now it is Lisa’s turn to pay it forward.  She must photograph a photographer’s family at no cost, provide files, and a print, and make sure they pay it forward!

John is a talented photographer - and that’s quite an understatement.  With the influence of my other good friend David A. Williams from Australia, this project is intended to get photographers and their families in front of the camera so they have a photographic history to pass on.  It is intended to continue to spread as each person “pays it forward”!

My thanks to David for the inspiration and John (and his better half Dalisa) for getting it going!