Oops

So I finally made the mistake of formatting my card before uploading the photos. I have heard that all photographers have either made a version of this mistake before\ or will eventually do it. I kinda wrote it off, thinking I would never do such a thing, but I did.

After shooting for my daily project by just walking around my apartment complex, I got home, was prepping and cleaning camera gear, and then formatted my cards as it was part of the weekly reset I was doing. Well, I haven't uploaded my photos yet. I realized this as soon as I pressed format, just watching the "formatting" screen thinking that I was the dumbest person on the planet. I was lucky that this wasn't client or paid work, then I would have really been in trouble. The thing is though, I was really proud of the photos I got. I saw some neighborhood kids playing with a dog, and then got a cool photo of a guy looking at his phone (all the photos I picked from the day will be shown). So even though it was urgent or critical I got the photos back, I wanted to. I made these photographs to capture my day, and that day was important to me. It was then, I decided to learn a new skill, how to recover deleted photos.

Scenic panoramic view of a coastal neighborhood with tall pine trees and colorful gardens along a residential street.

Ai is good?

Now if you know me, you know I have a iffy view on AI. Up to this moment, I thought it was good at getting lists or information organized, but I wouldn't dare touch it for creative purposes. The writing it produces sounds off, and you can always tell what a AI visual is. Though, the AI remove tool in Lightroom and Photoshop does come in handy at times...

Anywho, I am not a fan of AI usually and try to steer clear of it. For this project, recovering deleted files, I thought I would pick its brain. After telling it my situation, and asking for free solutions, it guided me to look into PhotoRec. Now, I did not have high hopes for this program, but it was free. The worst that can happen is I get a bunch of malware and viruses installed, so no harm right? So I went on their primitive (no offense to PhotoRec) looking website, downloaded the program and crossed my fingers that my computer didn't just get sick and die. It didn't.

Something I immediately learned with PhotoRec is that its not your typical program of app where you download, and it has a user interface when you click on it. This program downloads to the computer, but doesn't have anything to easily open it. You gotta open this bad boy in Terminal (at least on Mac). This is OLD SCHOOL to me. So I got back to my old friend Chat GPT, asked it to give me a step by step guide on how to open and use this program, and then asked it to guide me on how to make a clickable app that I can put on my computer where it automates everything.

Long story short, AI helped a non-coder like me navigate an intimidating program and then create a shortcut to it.

Three horizontal screenshots of a website layout showing navigation and content sections with blue color scheme.

Terminal window showing code editing interface with dark background and multiple text lists displayed.

Did It Work?

After some finnagleing and learning, yeah, I got it to work. It works beautifully in fact. It looks intimidating and complex, you can't use a mouse to click inside the program, and things can easily go wrong, but it works, and its free. I also learned something about SD cards in this process. When you format your card, it doesn't actually delete your images. What it does is it tells your card "Hey, all that space you have saved for those photos, yeah, you can open that space up again." Meaning, it doesn't push out the photos until new photos are being written. The first thing AI told me to do was "DO NOT TAKE ANYMORE PHOTOS" because if I did, it was possible that they would overwrite the photos I was trying to recover, then they would've been gone for good.

All this program does is bypasses the program of the SD cards, looks behind the curtain to see what data is actually stored on the cards rather than the data the cards say are on there. It's pretty cool.

If all of this went above your head, like it kind of did mine at first, just know that it works. As long as I don't take more photos and recover what I need immediately, I can recover my images.

A smiling golden retriever from above peeking into view on a dark background across a four panel progression.

Pretty Cool Skill

Let's wrap this up. So I was dumb, and formatted my cards before I should have. I got with AI and it gave me a step by step guide on how to recover these images, for free no less. I downloaded an intimidating program, learned how to use it, and made it easier for me to access and use later. I learned a cool fact about storage devices and what formatting actually does. At the end of the day, I learned a legitimately useful skill to use in my photography career.

So, if you ever find yourself in this boat, which I hope you don't, but if you do, there are creative and interesting solutions out there. You just gotta put the work into it. I guess that's true about a lot of things in life. Keep your head up if you ever come across a problem like this, or anything else that seems set in stone. Try viewing the problem in a different angle and or put on a different lens. Get creative.