If your main income comes from being a professional photographer, then you are completely aware of how important storing and backing up your files are. Keeping your portfolio, all your life’s work is a more difficult task to accomplish than it may seem.
First of all, there is always a risk of losing your files – your computer may crash down, it may get stolen, or just become old and simply not turn on one day. Another issue is that you are taking high-quality photos, which are taking up more and more space after each project.
As with the number of files, it is getting more and more difficult to deal with all those footage and other digital files, so today, we want to help you out and share some photography tips about storage and backup options.
Why Photo Storage & Backup Are So Important?
As a photographer, you have a lot of files to deal with and to protect. After all, it is one of your main sources of income, right? No matter if you work with stock photography or work as a photographer for weddings, the content that you create is your portfolio.
Therefore, it does not matter which storage and backup solutions you choose; they need to be trustworthy. More to it, it is crucial that you understand the system that you use or create. It is important that you can easily navigate through your files and find what you need.
Make sure it is easy for you to determine which are the original copies of your files and where they are stored. Also, ask yourself a question if you have a solution if your hard-drive was to fail this very second? Do you have your files backed up?
The different options for a photographer to back up his files are listed below.
1. Use Cloud Storage
More and more people, not only creative professionals, are starting to keep their files on cloud storage devices like iCloud, Google Drive, DropBox, and many others. And it is not strange that a service like this is becoming more popular every single day – it has so many advantages to it.
First of all, no matter what happens – if your computer gets stolen, drowned, burns down, or you lose your external hard-drive, you will still have access to your files and will be able to download them to any device you want.
More to it, the accessibility of files saves you a lot of time – you no longer need to place your files to USB drives or send zipped files via websites like Wetransfer. You can easily access your files from any device and share it in seconds by copying and pasting a link.
2. Use an External Hard Drive
Even though an external hard drive is not a perfect option, since it can easily crash down, become corrupted, spilled, lost, or stolen – but there is one specific case where it has more advantages than cloud storage would. So what is it?
For example, if you travel a lot or often like to work in your summer house where there is almost no internet connection, cloud storage will be no use. To use cloud storage is one thing but to use it for photography business – it is a completely different thing. You need a good internet connection and fast internet speed to work properly.
This is because you will be downloading large files and possibly a lot of them, especially if you plan to edit a photoshoot. And if the internet connection is very poor and barely there, it will take you ages to accomplish your task, and it will decrease your productivity significantly.
3. Use Cloud Backups
If you decide to use cloud backup, your first backup will be quite long – it may even take up for a few weeks or even a month, especially if you have been in the photography business for quite a while. But it highly depends on your internet connection and how many files you have to backup.
After you are done with your first backup, the biggest job is already done. From now on, everything is taken care of by the software – all of the new files will be automatically backed up for you, and the old versions automatically updated.
The updates of your files require minimum use of data, and it is very convenient because you do not need to worry about reminding yourself to regularly update the cloud backup, which is its main advantage.
