As a photographer, having a solid backup strategy for your photos should be very high on the priority list. After all, if you’ve ever lost one of your own precious images, you’ll know the heartache. Now think of what it would be like to lose the images of someone who paid you money and trusted their wedding day/portraits/event/etc. photos to your care. It would be devastating for both parties involved, which is why if you don’t have a fail-safe, multiple backup system, it’s time to get one. If not, your a** and your business may be on the line someday.
Wedding photographer Francesco Spighi has worked on developing his own system for backing up, “something not too complicated and expensive, but at the same time reliable enough to let [him] sleep peacefully without being worried about [his] customers’ photos.” He created the following infographic to show what he does from camera to delivery. In the end, there are multiple copies, and he can rest assured that his files are safe.
His backup strategy begins in camera with shooting on two cards in both of his Nikon D810’s. Then he imports his raw files both through Lightroom and onto a working external hard drive. He creates a standard and a smart preview and then exports the high-resolution jpeg files. He then takes the jpegs and the Smart Preview catalog and saves them on the cloud (with Microsoft Onedrive).
[REWIND: SYNOLOGY DS2015XS | OUR FAVORITE AND THE MOST AFFORDABLE 10GBE NAS (YEAH…IT’S FAST)]
His external drive with the raw files is timed with a NAS and then syncs the files to a second external hard drive. He now has numerous copies of the images – two on the memory cards, three copies on hard drives, and one more on the cloud. Finally, he uses a professional service to archive the images on a cloud before formatting his memory cards.
To read Francesco Spighi’s original post, check out his website here.
What is your backup strategy? Comment below.
Get Connected!