You know what I could ramble on about all day? Backup processes. I’m about to reveal how much of a nerd I am, but as someone who worked in tech for many years and has a degree in computer science, this is my soapbox.
I am going to share with you the backup process that I swear by so you can rest assured your wedding day photos are safe with me. If you’re a photographer still trying to figure out your backup process, this is for you too!
In my former tech career, the company I worked for managed sensitive data for clients, and more often than I’d like to admit, we lost data or drives. With the sheer amount of data we stored, it was inevitable.
When I began shooting weddings, I always backed up in two places, thinking I was being extra cautious. One weekend, one of my drives went out. I took out my backup drive, and my husband immediately dropped it. I lost a year of finished wedding galleries, and I learned an important lesson.
In tech and in wedding photography, often clients don’t realize how easy it is to lose photos. It’s not fun to talk about, but after those experiences, my backup process is incredibly thorough, failsafe, and sets me apart from other photographers.
For starters, I always shoot on two cards. Immediately when I get home from a wedding, I download the photos to a hard drive. This hard drive is automatically backed up to a cloud location. I use an application called Backblaze which backs up anything from my hard drive without any intervention from me. I also copy them to my NAS which gets replicated twice. For my fellow data storage nerds, an NAS is a disk drive that when connected to your network, is accessible from anywhere in the world. By the time I get home, your wedding is backed up in six different places. Plus, I leave your wedding images on one of my memory cards until the gallery is delivered. Better safe than sorry.
My backup process is expensive, but it’s a part of my business that lends me and my clients some peace of mind. Your wedding photos are photos you can never take again, and while other wedding photographers might quote you a lower price point, make sure you ask what their backup process is like. Otherwise, worst case scenario, you might be relying on whatever photos your mom snuck with her iPhone. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Are you looking for a photographer that will ensure your wedding photos won’t get lost, or are you a photographer that needs a hand to make sure you don’t lose your clients photos? Head here.
