What's in the box?

Oh, don't you just love beautifully packaged gifts?  Some people just have a gift for wrapping gifts!! Here is how I package the DVDs with all your wonderful, awesome wedding photographs - in a little box to treasure and keep safe for many years to come.

It is always a good idea to have a back-up of your photographs.  So I suggest you keep a copy somewhere on a computer and/or external hard drive and on disk.  Keep your disks in a cool dry place and always handle with care!

I am grateful for the ever growing size of external hard drives! As camera bodies evolve, the files are getting enormous.  Here is my back-up procedure:

At a wedding I have several CF cards on which I shoot. I shoot in RAW format.  During the reception, I download all photographs to my notebook as a back-up.  When I get home from the shoot, I download to my external hard drive.  I do my editing on the copy on my notebook.  When I am done, I back-up the edited JPG files to my external hard drive.  I cut two sets of DVDs with the final photographs, one for you, my treasured client, and the other for myself.  I also back-up the RAW files to DVD.  When I am done, I have a copy of both the RAW and JPG files on my external hard drive and DVD.  I am still not sure how long I will keep the photos on the hard drive though. I remove the files from my notebook once it gets too full on a first-in-first-out basis.  (On my wish list, is yet another external hard drive, just in case!)

So, how do you safeguard your digital memories? 

Happy photographing & back-ups!

 S.