One of the worst things that can happen to you as a photographer is to lose your images due to a corrupt hard drive or memory card. Here is an excellent plan to put in place to protect against hard drive failure.
Have you ever had a memory card corrupt? I have, and it will happen to you too eventually. Somewhere along the way, I became too confident in technology. I had a headshot session for a local company, and for some reason, I decided I could get by on a single card. And sure enough, the card corrupted, and I lost part of the session. It was embarrassing enough to call the client and tell them I had to reschedule some of their employees. What’s worse is that it could have easily been an irreplaceable session, like a wedding. That was the last time I would put all my eggs in the single basket of one memory card.
In the video above, Spyros Heniadis lays out his workflow for protecting himself from image loss. The method Heniadis uses might be more complicated than what you are looking for, but the basis of having three copies of your images, one of which is offsite, is sound advice for any photographer. An important note that I want to add is that with backups, timing is everything. I believe it’s imperative to back up your images as soon as your session is over to prevent the possibility of losing a card or shooting over it. This also leads into a point about how fast you are delivering your images. If you have long turnaround times, there is a greater liability for something to go wrong. Backups are everything for a photography business, and having a proper plan is essential.
What about you? Let me know in the comments below what method you’ve developed for backing up your photos.
Lead image by Pixabay user StockSnap, used under Creative Commons.