The SD Card Saga
Picture this (pun intended): The city of Bangkok buzzes with life, street venders call out advertisements for their tasty treats against the din of bumper-to-bumper traffic a few streets away. The air is thick and heavy with the heat, and the clouds overhead offer hope in the form of cool droplets of rain, just moments away. The soy you find yourself on, the one between the hotel and the transit system, however, is quiet…save for the persistent sound of a camera shutter.
A large, majestic tree (how cool is this thing?!) is generously playing host to a beautiful doll and, not a stone’s throw beyond, two enthusiastic, sunburned adults lavish both doll and tree with compliments as they would any seasoned model. The camera clicks rapidly, trying to capture the beautifully repainted features in the best possible light before it fades, or before the heavens open and wash away their opportunity.
That was my hubby and I, about six months ago, when we were last in Thailand. We found ourselves snapping away like our memory cards depended on it. It was a simple goal, really: capture Moira in all her glory against the backdrop of Thailand as seen through our eyes (which is, admittedly, limited when one is using a crutch and carting around photography gear). But as life often reminds us: not all plans go off without a hitch.
Enter the villain of our tale. A tiny piece of silicon harboring a mischievous streak that rivalled the most notorious. An SD card I’m going to call kArEn.
After filling up the card with doll-driven adventures for a few days, I decided to pop the card into the laptop, brimming with anticipation, expecting a montage of doll-centric escapades to grace my screen. Instead, I was met with blurry, pixelated messes that looked like Moira had decided to moonlight as a cubist sculpture. It was as if the camera had attended a surrealist art workshop in its spare time and was dragging its reluctant friends and family to see the dismal results.
Alas, technology can be a fickle friend. Months passed and I went through every troubleshooting manual, and several customer-service agent suggestions, nothing seemed to work. I began to question whether or not the camera had gained sentience and decided to go an avant-garde, artistic route for future photography. Other SD cards didn’t share the same inclination, however, so we knew what the problem was…just not how to fix it.
It became the source of not-so-amusing frustration, even going so far as to warn us about viruses that simply didn’t exist. I finally broke down, swallowed my pride, and reached out to a friend of mine. We’ll call him the digital wizard. It took him several weeks, but he was able to struggle some – not all – of the photos from the clutches of digital mayhem.
I hope you enjoyed the handful of photos posted today, as they’re a small sampling of what I have, waiting to be shared. Sadly, not all pictures escaped pixelated purgatory. I’ll have more from Thailand over the coming weeks. Thank you for your patience.
Lesson learned: Take, and use, multiple SD cards. Uhg.
