Backup Your Images

While producing images for the gallery show at the Chico Paper Company in Chico, California I realized that I have not been doing a very good job backing up my images. Consequently, I have spent the past few days going through the hard drives and consolidating images for backup. There are so many ways to accomplish this task…it requires a bit of thought, a couple of hard drives, some blank DVD’s and most importantly time. As a matter practice I always return from a day of shooting and immediately download all of the raw images to my desktop. I then spend an hour or two using Adobe Bridge and evaluate each image for sharpness and composition. The images that make this initial cut are then put onto an external hard rive and mirrored on an identical external hard drive. This is where I usually stop and get the compact flash cards ready for the next shoot. I completely format each card and place cards back into the camera bodies so that I am ready the next time the camera comes out of the bag.

Now for the part that takes the time…every couple of weeks I spend a day or two going through the most recent “selects” and pull out what I determine to be the final cut. Each image must be tack sharp, exposed correctly and most importantly composed well. These are the images (finals) that are completely processed and output for the intended use. Some will be sent out as editorial submissions, some will be used for my web and blog sites and the cream of the crop are reserved to sell as prints in the galleries. Once all of this work has been complete I burn the finals that I chose onto two DVD’s. One set of these DVD’s will stay in the studio and the other set is mailed to my folk’s house where they keep them stored in a cool dry place.

This is just one of many ways to accomplish one part of the digital asset management task. Like I said earlier there are many different workflows and you will have to find one that works for you. If you want some additional information I just recently listened to a very helpful audio podcast by the guys over at MacBreak Tech. If you have time go to itunes and do a search for the MacBreak Tech podcast and look for the episode called “Backmatic Automatic Backup.”