Photo Backup Workflow For Food Photographers
I am sharing with you my photo backup workflow for Food Photographers. In reality this workflow can be used for any type of photographer, based in a studio or even photographic out in the field. This backup workflow can also be used by hobbyist photographers as well of course.
Read on …
Why do we need to make backups of our photos?
It’s a well-known occurrence that I have heard several times over the years and the reason we need a photo backup workflow.
You are out taking photos, and when you get back home and plug the memory card into your computer and the computer doesn’t recognise the card. Maybe the card is recognised but the images are somehow corrupted. You find half an image with the bottom half all stripy colours. If you’ve taken enough digital photos in your time, you’ve seen this issue.
Or perhaps the card works fine, and you offload the images onto your hard drive and begin working on them. Weeks or months later, the hard drive fails or you accidentally delete the images. The computer is stolen or damaged in a fire. All potential scenarios.
Whatever the case, not having a backup workflow is high risk. For the hobbyist photography its a disaster losing all the images you shot on holiday or a special occasion. For the professional, it’s devastating and could send you into financial ruin losing work that a client has paid for.
Why have a photo backup workflow?
A photo backup workflow is important as it allows you to document the process and ensure that you’ve done the best you can to protect your images. It also allows you to perform the same backup routine every time. The images are always backed up in the same way and there is no disorganisation within the backup that can cause chaos later when restoring.
And the old saying goes – Your Backup is only as good as the ability to restore later.
Photo backup basics
With any type of computer file backup, the common rule of thumb is the 3-2-1 strategy.
– That is 3 copies of the file (your primary image file and two copies of it.)
– The copies should be should be backed up on 2 different type of media.
– 1 of those backups should be offsite.
The different types of media could be a NAS drive or any SAN or portable hard drive or USB stock or a DVD or even a completely separate hard drive on your computer. (separate physical drive, a partition or separate folder is not sufficient).
Offsite simply means somewhere that is a separate physical location from the other two copies. This could be, the boot of your car, or another office or house, or a cloud service. Having it in a different room in your house, or your garage is not considered offsite. We are concerned about fire or theft or meteor strike. Offsite needs to be reasonable far enough away to minimise these risks.
Here is my Photo Backup Workflow
Firstly I shoot to two cards simultaneously. My camera takes both a QXD and a SDXC card. I shoot RAW to both cards with the mode set to ‘Backup’. Each image gets the same file saved on both cards at the same time.
This configuration stops the risk of one card getting corrupted.
If I am shooting tethered, on location, then the files get saved onto the laptop internal hard drive. I then have a portable USB 3 SSD drive plugged in and this gets copies of the image folder as I am shooting.
If I am shooting tethered in my studio, then my Studio Workstation PC has the files. It is set up to automatically take the images hot off the camera and create two copies, on separate drives.
So, immediately, I have two copies of each photo.
If I’m on location, once I am back in the studio, I ingest the photos as I would normally, into Lightroom in the appropriate folder.
If I was shooting tethered in the Studio, my images get copied into the Lightroom structure automatically. (I shoot tethered into Capture One, but prefer to manage the images in Lightroom – see this blog post).
At this stage, I don’t delete the images off the cards, or the laptop or the portable drive. I’m in no hurry to do this until I need the space – but I certainly don’t delete them until a couple of days later. Only when the proper backups have taken place.
Automate As Much As Possible
Every 3 hours, my studio computer makes a connection to my server and syncs all files to it, copying across all the new files. It stores all new files on the server making duplicates of everything. Anytime I edit images, these get synced as well, not immediately, but on a three hour cycle. This is all automatic, I don’t need to remember to do any of this.
The server keeps a copy of all working files at all times.
The server continuously syncs into the cloud for my final backup. I have a subscription for BackBlaze which gives me unlimited storage into their backup cloud, and there lies my 3rd copy and one that is completely offsite.
Remember to test this occasionally. Check your offsite backups, and make sure you can actually download files OK and that you aren’t running out of space.
By ensuring I have a backup workflow I can concentrate on other areas of my business and not have the stress of potentially losing any work. Automate as much as possible so you don’t need to remember to do the tasks. And repeat the same process every single day.
And ultimately my customers are the winners here. They can be assured that all the hard work is not lost due to some unforeseeable but preventable technical issue.
And that’s one of the things my clients are happy to invest in.
Work with John Fyn Photography
My goal is to represent your food, your creations and your dishes working with you to enhance the presentation of these and therefore creating feelings of appetite at first sight to your customers.
I normally cover Greater London and South-East England for commissioned work - if you’re further away don’t worry, we can work something out. I also shoot food products in my home studio, if you prefer, these can be sent directly to me.
Contact me now to have a chat about your requirements ...