This story pulls at the heartstrings. A Vancouver-based photographer, Jourdan Tymkow, recently had her laptop stolen while shooting a wedding at Burnaby Lake Rowing Pavilion. The laptop contained about 2,000 of her clients’ wedding photos on it, images shot over the last couple of weeks. These photos, these once-in-a-lifetime images and memories, weren’t backed up.
The laptop was stored in a backpack in Tymkow’s car, parked in the pavilion parking lot while she was photographing the reception inside. During the reception, Tymkow noted some people milling about in the parking lot when she went to change lenses (which she stored in her backpack). Later that night, Tymkow found the rear window of her car smashed and the backpack gone.
“I totally had a breakdown. I have been pretty much crying ever since,” Tymkow noted.
Local police told her to check local pawnshops and Craigslist to see if her bag or laptop show up. The chance she’ll find it are slim. The computer is old, so police are unable to track it with a serial number. Tymkow usually backs up her photos regularly, but the location of one of the weddings did not allow for her to run her back-up.
Although the theft of the laptop and lenses is costly to Tymkow and her photography business, it’s the loss of the photos that is truly devastating. It’s hard to put a price tag on wedding photos.
“One of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my whole life is call the bride and tell her she’s not getting her wedding photos,” Tymkow told CTV.
Caitlin Henderson and Jim Beland are one of the couples affected by this theft. The newlywed couple from North Vancouver put out their own plea for the return of the laptop and their wedding photos.
The photographer made a mistake in only using her laptop as her back-up for the images, in not having another physical back-up if cloud storage was not available. She also made a mistake in keeping her valuables, no matter how old, in her car. That’s not a mistake she’ll ever make again (and we hope you learn from it too!). Not having Absolute LoJack is a mistake that you can avoid too. Absolute LoJack is the leader in data protection and theft recovery, with a proven solution that both locates your stolen device and gets it back to you. We have the best return policy in the business.