Backing Up

Having lost a lot of my photographs in the past when a hard drive failed, I am very strict about backing up all my images.  Fortunately most of the backups are created automatically but I do keep an eye on them every so often to make sure they are working.   Everyone's back up regime is likely to be different but I will describe my backup regime as elements of it will be useful to each of you.  

Lessons I have learned the hard way over the years are:

• Computer hard drives can and do fail, taking potentially years of photographs with them.
• Memory cards can and do fail.
• We, as users, can make mistakes that can potentially delete one or many important photographs.
• Phones/tablets can be lost, stolen or dropped

I have learned from these lessons the importance of storing my photographs in many different locations, I suggest that 3 different locations, including 1 cloud storage location, should be the minimum.

As I take photographs with 2 DSLR (Canon EOS 7D II and EOS 90D) and my iPhone 14 I need 2 different workflows to bring all my photos together in one place.

My Main Storage Location

All my photographs are stored on my computer (a Mac) hard drive.  That hard drive is synchronised with Dropbox(c) and is backed up daily onto an external hard drive.   So almost immediately I store a picture on my hard drive I have a backup in the cloud and usually within a few hours a 2nd physical copy is on an external hard drive.  I am protected against fire, theft and mechanical, electronic failure. 

Take note that my cameras and mobile devices are not part of my permanent photograph storage solution!  My photos may exist on these devices (for sometime at least) giving me another level of backup but I do not rely on them.

I use Adobe LightRoom Classic to manage and manipulate my images on my Mac.  This is part of a paid for suite of software packages (Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan, £19.97 per month).  I will write a bit more about this package in another blog.

I have to get my photographs from my iPhone and cameras into my storage solution.  It has to be easy, preferably automatic, otherwise it will be put off for another day.

Storing iPhone Images

For most of you, the Apple iCloud and Google Photos should be your first line of defence backing your images up to one or 2 cloud based storage systems.  Note: you have to have the Google Photos app running on web or as an application in order to get benefit from it.

I do not use these applications as part of my backup regime as I need to merge my photographs from both mobile and SLR cameras.

My iPhone backup solution uses elements of the Adopbe Photography Plan, mainly the iPhone Lightroom Mobile app.  This app automatically takes photos and videos from the Apple Photos app and synchronises them to the Adobe Creative Cloud.  The Lightroom Classic application on my Mac, automatically synchronises with the Creative Cloud and downloads photos onto my hard drive, from where they enter my back up regime to Dropbox and my external drive.

So, provided both LightRoom apps are switched on, photos I take on my iPhone are automatically copied to my PC and are backed up, often before I get back home.

Storing Camera Images

Both my DSLR have removable memory cards.  My EOS90D is wifi enabled and can automatically copy images onto Canon Cloud storage but I find this too slow so do not use it.   I transfer my camera images to my computer via a card reader attached to my Mac using LightRoom Classic.  These files are immediately backed up to Dropbox and my external drive.  All images (camera and iPhone) are filed by date in the same directory structure and are then tagged with keywords, graded and marked for further handling.  It is at this stage that I reject  and delete images that are technically poor, or are unwanted copies of other images.  These rejected images are deleted from my photo catalogue and from my hard drive and backups.  They may remain on my iPhone and in Adobe Creative Cloud or on the camera memory card to guard against deletion by error.

I rotate 4 memory cards through my cameras, inserting a different card for every shoot.  I usually start that shoot by deleting all images on the card, provided I have completed the processing of the previous generation of images.

Preserving Portfolio Shots

Amongst the many hundreds (?thousands) of shots I take there are a small number of "keepers"; those shots that stand out because of the memories they hold or because of artistic merit.

I export these shots to Google Photos and, increasingly, I am adding them to a website where I am building an online portfolio.  This acts as a final level of backup for that small subset of all the photos.

Conclusion

Every photograph I take is automatically copied to several different locations:

• Computer hard drive
• Computer external drive
• DropBox
• Adobe Creative Cloud (iPhone photos only)

The only manual operation in all this is to remove the memory cards from the cameras and connect them to the computer.

Ask yourselves where your photos are stored and what will happen if your camera/card/hard drive fails or is lost.  Do you have a working backup?