Hey, Hey, Back Up There

This Taupo wedding photographer has been wanting to write this blog post for a long time.  I am a member of lots of different online wedding photography groups, both in New Zealand and across the world.  One thing I see posted by photographers far too often is: 

"Help, I've lost the wedding files, how can I get them back?"

This is both unfortunate and preventable.  Often, file recovery software is able to retrieve most, or all, of the images.  Not always, however, and prevention of this type of disaster is always going to be a hundred times better.

To be able to prevent file loss effectively, we need to identify the risks and possible scenarios that cause loss.  These include, but aren't limited to:

• Burglary

• Card corruption

• Fire

• Hard drive failure

• Water damage

• Physical loss of cards

• Camera/lens failure

I'd like to take you through my process so you can rest assured that your images are as safe as they could be from these dangers.

• Back up camera

• Back up lenses

• Camera has two card slots so I shoot on two at once in case of card corruption

• Second shooter (backing up myself!)

• Following the wedding, one card is stored offsite

• Other card is backed up onto a hard drive and put in a safe

• Images are stored on two computers

• Finished images are uploaded to cloud storage

• Cards are not overwritten until images are delivered

Please do make sure you ask your wedding photographer about their process as it is so very important.