Lately, I’ve been talking with some of my past couples about the importance of backing up your wedding images and a few different ways you can go about it. So I figured I would let you in on my backup system.
To start with, I use professional grade camera that has 2 memory card slots. So, from the moment of creation, I have two copies of every image.
As soon as I get home from a shoot the images are copied to my computer and an external hard drive, so 4 copies have been created at this point.
Then I edit.
Once your images have been individually retouched, I make a copy of all the edited files on another external hard drive. This drive is set up as a RAID 1, so it makes identical copies on two hard drives within one housing. After that, I upload to the cloud and deliver all final images to you.
Then I format the memory cards and clear the files from my computer.
At the end of this process, I have your images uploaded to the cloud and on 3 external hard drives where your images will live until Christmas.
Once a year, around Christmas, I get another hard drive to back up everything that was edited over the past 12 months. This drive acts as off site storage & I send it to a friend who is also in the business of creating digital work. He sends me a copy of everything he has created over the year as well. This insures that if something was to happen to my home or office another physical copy would survive in addition to the cloud storage.
I take backing up your images very seriously, and you should too.
The internet love photos of cats!
Zak Jokela is a wedding photographer and photojournalist currently located in Billings, Montana, who frequently serves the Red Lodge, Bozeman, & Big Sky areas in Montana, Cody, Wyoming, and Watford City, North Dakota, he is also happy to travel elsewhere nationally or abroad. Fill out a contact form for more information regarding booking.
