How I Secure and Backup My Images
As a photographer, I would put myself at the low end in terms of the number of photos I take even when travelling, but recently, the volume has increased due to my continued use of the X-E4 and choosing to shoot both RAW + JPEG sometimes, which doubles the number of photos that reach my hard drive.
I don’t shoot 10,000 photos during a trip, and I rarely get over 1,000. Part of this low amount is the feeling that I got the shot I wanted. But that can also be due to not seeing a different or better composition. I admire other photographers when I see them in the same locations as me, capturing stunning photos. Damn it! Where was that when I was there? But seeing what could have been and what was missed is all part of progressing as a photographer.
I have been taking photos for over 15 years, and the volume of photos I amass continuously grows. Fortunately, I have been using the Canon 5D Mark II for the bulk of that time, so the size of the files hasn’t increased. Over the past year and a half, the X-E4 has resulted in more storage space being taken with larger files.
With many years of photos, copies are essential, and there are many ways to do so. I have used external hard drives but find the backup process cumbersome. They are also not that reliable in the long term. Also, the external hard drives are still on-site, and having an off-site backup option was something I preferred. Here are the processes and devices I use while away and at home and how I back up my work.
My Camera Media
I use two cameras, the Canon 5D Mark II and the Fujifilm X-E4, and with that, two media types - Compact Flash and SD Card. The largest capacity Compact Flash I have is 32GB. That is plenty for my shooting, but I also have a 16GB and some random smaller ones if needed. The size of the Mark II files means I don’t need much more storage in most situations.
SD cards are cheaper than Compact Flash and are generally more commonly available. I currently have a few 128GB, some 64GB and one or two 32GB. This is more than enough storage space for my typical usage.
When On the Road
On an automotive shoot, I don’t do any immediate backup as I am always close to home. I back up immediately when I get home. The process includes importing all photos into a folder in Lightroom and storing them on my 2TB internal hard drive that houses all my unedited photos. My Lightroom organization is a bit rudimentary, but I have a folder by year and sub-folders named for what the shoot is. That’s it.
I back up using two methods for travel and street as I am frequently away from home. First, concluding each night, I import the photos to Lightroom on my MacBook, giving me a copy on the hard drive and a convenient way to preview my images. I don’t do much editing while on the road as I prefer my desktop set up for that, but I have done culling and basic edits on a flight or train to pass the time.
Secondly, I copy my photos from the MacBook to a 1TB Western Digital portable SSD. I now have three backup copies: Mac, portable HD, and SD/Compact Flash cards. With three copies, I’m confident I’m backed up.
At Home
I open Lightroom and import my photos to the equivalent year folder. If there are numerous folders from different days on the card, I’ll wait for everything to be imported and move all of the day’s photos into one folder. For example, I’ll have a 2023 > New York 2023 folder structure. When I need to move files into different folders, I do it all in Lightroom. Since Lightroom acts as a shortcut to folders on your hard drive, I find it much easier to move the files within Lightroom itself, so I don’t have to relocate the folder after moving.
After all the files are imported and on my hard drive, I use Carbonite to back up to the cloud automatically. Carbonite is a cloud backup service that is about $90 CA per year and gives me unlimited cloud storage of my files. Carbonite can be set up to monitor selected drives, and I have it automatically backup files once it senses any changes to the specified drives. There are many options when considering cloud backup, but I have used Carbonite for years. It has been easy to integrate and runs in the background without interruption.
Carbonite’s upload process occurs in the background but comes with minor drawbacks. Once the backup process begins, some files can’t be moved locally as they are currently uploading. This is fine for small files as it takes seconds, but larger files take longer. It also seems to slow down Lightroom significantly during backup. The combination of freshly imported files, Lightroom’s processing, and the backup stage seem to take a toll on Lightroom’s speed. The best practice is to import the files into Lightroom and wait for the entire Carbonite upload process to be finished before moving or post-processing any of those photos.
Using Carbonite, I have a copy of all my important files and photos in the cloud, and if I ever have to recover them, I can download and restore them to a new hard drive.
Summary
The most important message here is to back up your work and have numerous copies of your photos in separate places. This is a process you do not want to put off. Invest in an online solution such as Carbonite to back up your files, and be sure it’s easy to recover them if needed.