Hateful hateful Apple

Decided to save some stuff today and back up computer like a good girl. Use time machine on a mac compatible hard drive. A firend had asked for some photos I took of her for a gig poster.
Some of the pictures I was looking for had simply disappeared. They all should have been saved within iPhoto. There were plenty of folders, but many of them were empty.
I have trawled the Apple Community help pages to no avail. Any photos directly backed up not imported using iPhoto were ok. Gutted enough but then worried I checked my Olympic Photos. All gone, nothing, folders all empty. I haven't even finished paying for it yet.
So lesson learnt. I shall no longer use iPhoto, I shall import using the Canon software and most of all make photo books of important things soon after snapping.
I only deleted them all from the computer last week as I knew I had backed them up :-(
Facebook has partly saved the day however. The photos are probably not in a decent file size but I did fine several on there including this one which I love. Taken by mum in the garden on our way up to watch Jessica Ennis on day 2 of her event doing the 800 metres.