travel stories :: around central park (and how to recover your photos through lightroom)

yes, today we’re having a huge title for the post and if you allow me we’ll have two stories on one single post! so, how are you my friends? are you getting ready for the weekend? due to some work (i wonder where all this sudden work came from), i’m going to stay in lisbon with mr kobe, while mr twiggs is going to his parents’ beach house (we are so fancy!!). i think that some bad weather may come, so it’s the perfect timing to stay inside working like a busy bee! but now the topic(s) for today! i shall bring you two! new york and data recovery!

first, i didn’t recover any files from the external hard drive (damn you toshiba!) and i’ve been downloading every recovery software around and none is being able to recover anything (no wonder the other company was giving me such an expensive quote). but i was going through lightroom after this lady left a comment with a tip, because i had the feeling that something was there to be done and i wasn’t seeing it. so, i actually figured it out a way to export my images even after losing them. so for all of you that use lightroom, there is hope, not one fabulous-amazing-quality-let’s-print-wallpaper-from-this-hope, but it will allow you to have some of your photos on a folder outside lightroom! all you need is to follow these steps:

1. create a folder on lightroom with all the images you want
2. then on your right side, click on web
3. select lightroom flash gallery
4. tweak the settings to set quality to 100 (instead of the 70), set image size to extra-large and “unselect” watermark
5. export and save the file to a safe place
6. go to that safe place, open your folder, go to images, select large and see all your images there in jpeg format

now, some will be with a very poor quality, like you took that with a mobile phone ages ago, but others will actually look decent and sharp!

and now the new york story, one of the places i really enjoy in new york is central park! it’s huge and it feels like you’re not in town, which can make you wonder, why being in new york, when you love to be in places that don’t feel new york like central park and soho? well, i’m not a crowd person. i like to feel that i have all the options and still being able to make my choice of not going that way today. i love new york, but rockefeller center is not for me. at least during christmas time. i love new york, but don’t take me to times square. i like to feel new york like a local, if i ever was able to do that. but it’s like wandering around new york, at a decent speed (not touristic speed awwww-look-at-that-building-over-there), enjoying the quite streets, but at the same time knowing that if i want to i have the whole world there next to me! and one of my delightful memories from my trip to new york in 2007 was wandering alone on central park on christmas eve morning. everything was quiet and there were a few new yorkers jogging and maybe some last-minute shopping, but the whole place was very quiet. and it was a beautiful winter morning… and i love sunny winter mornings. and this time, though we weren’t there on the 24th, we were there before christmas and we enjoyed a quiet walk from the 5th avenue and also coming down from upper west side, after museum of natural history. central park is good… is really good!

ps. and these were images recovered from lightroom, pretty nice quality, huh?