The Importance Of Backing Up

Help I was installing a new program on my computer and now I have a blue screen. What do I do? How many times have you heard this happen or maybe even had it happen to you. Read on in this week's blog to learn the importance of backing up your photos. Take some time to get it done before it's too late.

 Catastrophic failures happen every day in life. From hard drive failures on your computer to the tragedy of a house fire, and almost every time one of these unfortunate events takes place the words you hear most are "What about all my pictures." We are a very visual species and we cherish our memories that are usually immortalised in a photo or video and when we lose those we feel a great emptiness. Why is it then that we don't look after these things better?


Today's digital age is allowing options for looking after our photos that never existed to our forefathers. I use my laptop as a first copy of all my photos. I then back them up immediately onto my external hard drive that stays in my laptop bag, when not in use, so if something happens to my home then I can hopefully grab that one bag and exit my home. From there I burn my photos monthly to DVD and have two copies. One stays at my home and the other off site.

There are other options such as clouds, multiple hard drives, and others. What works for one may not work for another, a cloud for instance would not work for me due to the sheer volume of photos I would be trying to store. The important thing here is to remember have at minimum two copies of your cherished photos, you don't want to be a statistic of someone else who lost all their photographic memories.


The second part of backing up your photos is keeping them organised. One way is create a catalogue system according to shoot date. My system is to save all my photos on my laptop and external hard drive at the same time according to year_month_day_and description of the shot. You can see this below.

Another great tool is a catalogue similar to Adobe Lightroom. With this program you can attach "keywords" to the photo making it that much easier to find it in the future. There are a number of catalogue systems available on the market today so finding one that fits your budget and needs should not be a problem.

So there it is, several different ways to back up your cherished photographic memories. There is really no good excuse for not having them survive your most catastrophic failure, whatever that may be. Don't become a statistic and lose your great family memory.

Where The Heck Have I Been

Well it has been a long long time since I last blogged. I know you were starting to think, Oh Yeah another fly by night blogger, Here today and gone forever. For that I apologise. When I started I said you would be joining me on a journey. That journey has highs and lows, good and bad. So the last few months have been a low for my blogging inspiration, my photo inspiration, and really just in general blocked creatively and that SUCKS.

 Now I am back. Sit back relax and see where we go next.

Mount Slesse

Mount Slesse

These photos are what broke my slump.

Driving my child to school every morning I see the majestic Mount Slesse in the distance. It is nestled in its own frame of lower hills in front and the sky behind is breath taking this time of year. With this in mind I set out to capture the vision I have had of this picture for months.

You see this is the way of discovery.

 I visualised this photo over and over in my head. Other photographers talk or write of doing this but I seem to have been missing that element. Pre-visualization.  Then I heard an article on the radio that spoke about the need for long term self-visualization as being the journey to creativity.

While taking these photos I became more excited than I have for some time about shooting. Every frame, every click of the shutter and there on my LCD display was exactly what I had seen before I ever heard the click.

That was the journey, the reason I have been away for the past few months, and I have no regrets. Coming out on the other side has left me rejuvenated, excited, and more creative than I ever have been.

I look forward to sharing with you more of this journey as time goes by and remember if you are in your creative slump look at the pictures in your mind and leave your camera in the bag for a while. You won’t regret it, I know I haven’t.