Protect Your Photos Before You Lose Them!
It is every photographer’s worst nightmare to lose a hard drive, a laptop, or an archive of images. Years of work and countless photo galleries can be lost in an instant. That’s why it’s so important to think about how you are going to store and organize your photos before something bad happens.
Gone are the days of storing photos on film in a cool, dry room. Now we have hard disks, external drives, multiple formats, CDs, DVDs, internet storage and memory cards. Instead of storing a copy of the image, we are storing data that must be findable and readable…sometimes this is harder than it sounds!
External Hard Drives
The best way to store images is on an external hard drive—or rather, on multiple external hard drives. Hard drives are the easiest to access from your computer, and they can store the most data, making it possible to store thousands and thousands of searchable photographs. However, these are mechanical devices and as such are not indestructible.
I recommend mirroring data on hard drives so that a copy of every image resides on two different drives. If one fails, you have a backup.
File Formats
It is best to save your files as RAW files and/or uncompressed TIFF files. These are large files, but they save your images in the highest possible quality and will never be obsolete. Just as with film, the higher the quality of the negatives, the better the prints will be.
Organization
Another issue in storing your photo galleries is how you will organize all the images you have. There is one thing to remember here: pick a method and stick to it! Choose date (month & year), location (“Grand Canyon Photography”), or theme (wildlife, landscape, etc.). You may choose to combine these, but always start with the same one. You will forget where certain photos are located, so the having a system for it will save you time and energy in the long run.
DVDs
Many photographers keep a copy of their photos on DVD. And sometimes hard drives are just too expensive. If you choose to store images on DVD then make sure that you buy high quality DVDs, that you store them well, and that you have two copies of every image…on different DVDs!
Online Storage
Storing images online can also be a good option. Online images are more accessible (from anywhere you have an internet connection) and easier to share. The problem is that it often takes hours to upload even a small number of high-quality images. With some websites (like Photo Shelter) you can mail a DVD or a hard drive to them so that many photos can be put on their server at once.
I’ll talk more about this at my nature photographic workshops if you require more assistance.
