Ginny Adkins Photography Blog

Palm Bay Fire Pictures

Here are some pictures from the iPhone.  Let me just tell you that phone is worth it's weight in gold it has been a lifesaver during this time.  If you are undecided on it- just get it you will love it.

Palm Bay Fires.  I will try and keep these in order as I pull them off the phone. 

1. Driving South on San Fillipo Monday afternoon around 2:30pm.  It was a horrible feeling to see that smoke and know it was destroying homes.  Scared doesn't even describe it.

2. Fire coming up the east side of Cogan toward our side of the street.

3. Fire coming across the west side of the street.  This is when I threw the phone in my car.  The fire was moving FAST!

4. The Palm Bay City spray truck helping to put out the fire that burned closest to the back yard (this is early in the fire Monday around 6pm I think)

5. Here is a view today from the street behind us (the lots that butt up to our homes).  This is the fire we were throwing buckets on over the fences.

6. An example of humor amid the destruction.  This was a huge explosion when the truck blew up, it sounded like a bomb.  All the houses around this fire (again the street behind mine) were saved as well! AMAZING.

7. Again, not everyone had the luck that we did.  This is someone's home, their life's belongings, all the little memories that help us define our lives.  Please keep these families in your thoughts.  This is just one house but there are so many more.  So many families picking through ashes to find just one thing to hold onto. 

Our home is safe!

Thank you all so much for the prayers, the phone calls, emails.  Our home is safe and standing!  We are so blessed.  I can't begin to tell you how much relief it was to know the house was safe. We are still without power so we were using the generator for water. 
Today we spent the day dealing with the hot spots and flare ups.  We are so thankful for the hard work of neighbors, friends, family and the fire fighters!

Many people were not as lucky and have lost everything- please remember them in your thoughts.

Here is a picture from the fire across the street from our house.  This one kept flaring up all day (again from the iPhone- I can't find my card readers for the cameras but I do have some good pictures)!

FIRES

I know many of my clients (who are not just clients they are FRIENDS) are waking up the same as I am today- scared and sad.  Our homes are in danger or lost.  Please send all your prayers and thoughts that homes can continue to be saved and for those that lost their homes that rebuilding will be a time to grow stronger. 

I will just cut and paste some of the emails and I will update this afternoon as soon as I know anything about my own home. 

Last night 12am

Jeff and I left around 9pm after battling as much of the fires as we could.  When we left the fires were blowing onto the roof.  I am praying so hard the house is spared.  This has been so scary, exhausting, and just sad.  I don't really know what to do other than pray and hope our home is spared.  It has been so hard to watch your neighbors homes go up in flames especially to know someone set these fires. 

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers and all those families that have been effected by this awful fire.  I will update as I know more information (most likely in the afternoon tomorrow after we go back to visit the house).

This Morning 7am

Thank you thank you thank you! It feels amazing to know people are praying and hoping with us. I can't describe how scared I am and how it just stinks not knowing. I mean when we left there were no firefighters there (in fact we never had a fire fighter on our street all day/night last night-there just aren't enough of them).

I really can't 'do' anything right now except watch the news and look at the news reports online.

Right now the count is over 70 houses gone. I am so scared. I feel like I should rush down there but I know I can't. We really tried to get out a lot of stuff but we couldn't be inside the house packing as fires were in the back and front yard, kwim? I think it was 4:45/5pm when I stopped taking pictures and that is when the fire rushed down our street over the road and everything. Burning everything and just flying so fast. That is when we started fighting the fire closest to the front yard. It is surreal. Everyone was gone (well say less than half the home owners stayed). Jeff was fighting the front yard with 8 garden hoses hooked up to the one house that had power for some odd reason. And I was in the back with my next door Rick and Naomi. We had to put out 3 fires in the back yard as the fences burned and the fire surrounded all the area. HORRID. This is 1000000 times worse than all the hurricane.

In all this I am so blessed. We did get out some of our important papers, clothes and computers. I had to leave one computer and I think I left two of my client back up drives which makes me so sad as I know right now at least one clients home was very damaged. I will do whatever I can to help these families get those images back.

I also learned something else (well I didn't really learn it I just had it reinforced) my husband is an amazing man. Not just a strong man, not just a good man but amazing! Physically he never stopped. Jumping fences going right into the woods to dump buckets on the fires standing in the fire with a garden hose, running up and down the street to get more hoses. When everyone left or couldn't do it and were standing in the street just watching, Jeff was still fighting. When we left in the dark last night it was so hard for him. I think he really thought we had a chance and the house might make it. It was so hard for him to quit and leave. Last night when I was trying to go to sleep I realized there is no one I could ask to have gone through this with. He is my hero.

please keep praying

This is an image from my iPhone taken right as the fire jumped the road coming down our street.  I don't think I have any pictures after this.  It was all about saving houses after that.

Sweet Julia needs you!

I know I have not been the best blogger in the past few months. I have a new blog in the works and I have neglected this one badly.  I will do better and I am sure you will just love the new one (larger images/faster downloads/and it's pretty too). 

But now I have a serious request.  Yesterday I got the news that another one of my sweet clients has a brain tumor.  Julia will be having surgery tomorrow and needs all your prayers and positive thoughts.  If you would like to leave her a message her Caring Bridge site is

https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/juliamccarthy

Julia is such a sweet girl and so loving.  I know she is going to do great!  Send her your best!!

This is SO funny I had to share

This was just emailed to me and so funny!   I can't stop laughing.  I hope all you mom's enjoy!

http://www.inthemotherhood.com/

Disney Snap Shots

Disney was so much fun!  It was amazing seeing "L" so excited.  We didn't stay too long or ride many rides but it was perfect for him.  We saw three parades and some fireworks that night too.  I suprised my husband by leaving the "big" camera and only taking our little Elph.  It sure was nice not caring that heavy camera bag!  So .. without further waiting (I know you can't stand it)  Here is our Disney trip..

Wait until you see the amazing rainbow over the hotel- that was something!

 

Oh and can you just tell how thrilled he is that I am taking pictures on the ride?

Vacation is almost over

Well it hasn't been a vacation everyday but we were able to get two amusement park weekends in and we are doing some kitchen remodeling so the fun continues.  I have been keeping up with my New Year's 366 Images (well I might have missed a day or two but for the most part :)  I hope some of you decided to try it too. I started carrying the point and shoot camera with me everywhere and I am getting such fun pictures of our days.  The camera even came in handy when I bought new furniture, since it won't be here for weeks.  I will share a bunch of them in order as soon as I download the card.

First we went to Busch Gardens in Tampa.  We had free tickets- thanks so much Nicki!! and we enjoyed it so much!  Right after Christmas we took "L" to Disney World, those will have to be a new post!

Busch Gardens-  He loved the train and suprised me by riding every ride he could ALL by himself!

and sometimes after taking an almost three year old to Busch Gardens you decide they "should" go to Timbuktu ;)

Growing families

I love watching families grow and this one is no exception.  I will be back soon with images of their new little boy!  Congrats.

366 and I am going to rememeber

New Years Resolutions are over rated unless they stick.  I decided to start the 365 (but this year 366 due to Leap Year) Photo Challenge.  This is a simple way to document your life, your creativity.  You don't have to take an artistic picture every time, just document that day.  So the deal is - One Picture per day ALL year!  Don't skip a day.  If you are sick; well take a picture of the bed.  If you are on vacation.. well that is easy :)   I hope some of you will take me up on the challenge.  I would love to see your year in review! 

To help myself succeed I took my husbands point and shoot camera (Canon Elph) and put it in my purse so I will always have a camera with me.  I also decided to try and look for fun things to photograph and keep a little notebook.

here is some inspiration

http://flickr.com/groups/365days/ 

marvelous

Happy New Year!  2008 already, I can't believe it.  I hope all of you had a happy holiday season and safe New Year.  As we approach 2008 I am looking forward to some changes and know I couldn't be making those changes without all of you.  I am so blessed to have each of you in my life.  Clients, friends, family all of you have helped reach my goals for 07 and move towards great ideas in 08.  Thank you THANK YOU thank you!!

So I guess the first thing on my agenda should be figuring out this typepad blog.  I had this marvelous idea to create blog entries for the holidays and then have them post automatically while I was away for the holidays.  Well, as you can see that didn't work so well.  I will have to figure that out today and tweak the posts to make them relevant now.  All this means for you is that the blog will be moving a bit faster in the coming weeks.

Here are a few images from a fantastic family.  I have to explain a bit about the dog.  I have photographed many people that don't enjoy being photographed but this sweet dog took the cake. It was as if with every click of the camera I was stealing her soul!  She would run and hide when she heard the shutter click.  I got one though ;)