Data Management: Back it up

I make between 10,000 – 12,000 images a year.  That’s a lot.  Most of them can be discarded without worry, but keeping the pictures I want to keep is important to me.  There are as many systems to back up images as there are photographers.  I’m going to explain my backup regimen here.  If you have a different way, I’d love to hear about it. 

In the days of film, managing your photos meant keeping track of your prints and negatives.  This could mean shoe boxes and photo albums, or for the more fastidious, negative sheets in binders and proof sets, labeled and numbered.

With digital photography, it’s still important to consider how to keep track of your photos.  If your computer catastrophically crashes as you’re reading this, would you lose any important images?

Some tips I recommend when backing up your images:

• Back up to multiple discs
• Back up to multiple locations
• Take advantage of online services to back up online
• Have at least two copies of everything you want to keep

I say you should back up to multiple discs for a simple reason:  Hard dives fail.  I back up all of my images to an external hard drive.  Then, I back up the “keepers” to either a CD or a DVD-ROM.  Thus, if my computer fails, I have two backups.  If one of my backups go, I have a second one.  And if everything dies simultaneously, I have bigger problems than finding my photos.

Those CDs and DVDs?  If I kept them on my desk at home, one house fire could wipe out all of my backups simultaneously.  By taking one backup set out of my house, that minimizes the danger. 

(not my photo)

My “good” photos are backed up online – either on the photo-sharing service Flickr (public) or on unlisted directories on Picasa (private).  Should an asteroid take out Boston, I can still log on from outside the impact zone and get the images back.

And by doing all of this, I have more than two copies of everything I want to keep.  Even with the chances of multiple disasters wiping out all of my backups being very slim, media do fail.

My backup regimen is much more intricate, but explaining the complexities adds nothing to the point:  Back it up!  One of these days, you’ll be glad you did.

Photographing Anna

My friend Anna stopped by my workplace freshly coiffed on Wednesday.  As I’m wont to do on both special and not-so-special occasions, I brought out my camera to commemorate the event.

I really like this photo.  More importantly, Anna likes it.  There are a couple of things I wish I’d done differently, but overall, it’s a very nice photograph.

The photo was taken using my 50mm lens opened up to f/2.0, at 1/50th of a second, with my white balance set to around 3200 degrees.  The light was provided by incandescent lamps, so it was necessary to really open up the aperture in order to draw in the most light – especially since I was hand holding the camera.  The more light you let in, the faster your shutter speed – and vice versa.

A wide open aperture also renders a nice shallow depth of field.  This allowed me to get her face – and most importantly, her eyes – in focus, while blurring out the items behind her.  This let me minimize distractions, helping the viewer to see Anna and not try to figure out what that is behind her.

Between the ceiling lights and one lamp to the right of the photo, plus the lamp behind her, Anna was lit pretty well.  The lamp behind her worked as a good key light to bring out the texture of her hair.  By standing and having Anna look up toward me, I accentuated her jaw line.  Most importantly, although this is nothing that I did specifically, Anna was feeling relaxed and serene.

If I had the photo to do over again, I would have brought out my external flash to provide just a touch of fill light.  That would have helped wash out the shadow her glasses cast on her right cheek. 

The most important element in this photograph, it should be said, was the model.  She was feeling relaxed and knew her her hairdo was spectacular.  If your model is comfortable, you’re guaranteed to get better photos. 

Rush jobs

Last Wednesday, I was approached by a client who requested that I photograph a special event the next afternoon.  It turned out to be a lesson in putting together a rush job and in cultural sensitivity.

The special event was her grandson’s B’rit Milah, commonly known as a Bris.  (That link isn’t for the squeamish, by the way.)  This is the ritual circumcision done to all Jewish boys on the eighth day of their lives, and it’s a very important religious occasion.

I did a little reading to learn about the event, then spoke with the grandmother about what exactly she wanted to have photographed.  (Mostly, she wanted photos at the seudat mitzvah – the celebratory dinner – afterward.)  As a returning client who has hired me on many previous occasions, I didn’t go over fees and costs; usually, I insist on going over that right away. 

24 hours isn’t a lot of time to prepare for a shoot – especially a shoot at an uncertain location.  There are things I do before every photo shoot, however, and knowing this helped me to get ready without getting too panicked by the short notice:

1. Format all memory cards.  Simple enough, but very important, because you may need every bit of space available on your memory card.  Halfway through an event is not the time to be rushing through your images deleting pictures from the camera menu to make room for new ones.
2. Grabbing my backup camera.  At a photo shoot – particularly a shoot of a religious event fraught with meaning and emotion, and not easily replicated – I try to have a backup camera ready.  If my main camera fails to work for some reason, the backup (which uses the same lenses and accessories) is at the ready.
3. Sorting my camera bag.  When you’re busy at an event, you need to know where everything is, and be able to grab it quickly.  Going through my bag lets me sort out what I need and what I don’t, lightens my load, and I’m certain I have the important things on hand.
4. Resetting my camera settings.  I always try to set my camera to the same basic setup before I put it away.  In my case, it’s set to ISO 100, Program Mode, with white balance set to 5500°.  Having my “default” settings always handy is very helpful in taking that first photo.

By always doing the items above prior to an event(for less important events, I omit step 2), getting ready for a rush job is less stressful and more routine. 

The photo shoot, by the way, was a success.  I always prefer to have more notice before a photo shoot, but it’s comforting to know that I can do a good job with less than 24 hours notice.

Cropping in the Camera

Behold the Scaleograph.  In the days before electronic publishing, layout artists used this device to mark up photo prints for cropping and sizing.  If it looks vaguely familiar, it may be because the crop tool icon in many photo editing programs is based on it:

(screenshot from Photoshop CS4)

Many times, people will take a photo that has a distraction in it, and then say, “Oh, I’ll just crop that out.”  I say, if it’s distracting and can be cropped out later, why photograph it now?

In high school, college, and during my days as a Navy Journalist and Photojournalist, I was taught to “crop in the camera.”  That is to say, I did my best to fill the frame with the point(s) of interest, so that a lot of cropping or other post-processing wasn’t necessary.  Back then, post-processing was either done in a wet darkroom or left up to a trusted photofinisher – a difficult, time-consuming, and tedious process, involving devices like that thing at the top of the entry.

It’s much simpler to crop photos today than it was 20 years ago, certainly, but something that isn’t considered is whether it should be done more often, simply because it’s easier.  It seems much better to me to take the photo you want to take in the first place than to spend time afterward making a poor photo into the one you want.

This isn’t to say you should never edit your images.  That’s ridiculous.  Often, a little work in your image editor will make a good image great.  One of my favorite shots ever (above) is cropped square, a shape you could never crop in your camera.  My point is that you shouldn’t depend on Photoshop, or GIMP, or whatever you use to edit your images, in order to fix something you shouldn’t have done in the first place.  Because, given a choice between making photos or Photoshopping them, I’ll take the camera any day.