Anowar Photography :: WEDDING | PRE/POST WEDDING | PORTRAIT

With the revolution in the digital technology, life becomes so much easy then before. Now a days everyone has a camera, whether it is a point & shoot (P&S) or DSLR or a built-in camera in cell phone. We take number of photographs to capture our beautiful moments and the story of our life. Today, I like to write about “How to Protect Your Digital Photos at Home” not as a Professional Wedding & Portrait Photographer but as a father of a kid and husband of my wife.

Every year I shoot lots of Wedding & Portraits but beside that I also capture my own family photographs and personal projects. In this post I will describe how I manage my Digital Photos to protect them for lifetime. Digital Photos are very sensitive and scary if you do not manage them in a right way. Your carelessness can results in lost of your all digital memories and water in your eyes.

Back in 2007, I have experienced such a painful journey with my 80GB Hard Drive. Without any notice, that HD was just crashed and leave me in a desert with empty hand. I lost all the loving moments within a second just because I was not that much careful about those files.

For my personal photographs, I maintain the simple but very effective workflow to preserve the photographs:

1. Copy the Digital Files in Laptop/Desktop Hard Drive
2. Make a Digital Negative (Burn in DVD)
3. Store Selective Photos in Portable Hard Drive
4. Preserve in Hard Copies: Make Photobook/Album (I have recently started this one)
5. Online Gallery/Facebook Album

Let me describe all the steps in a small detail:

COPY THE DIGITAL FILES IN LAPTOP/DESKTOP HARD DRIVE

I copy the captured files in my Laptop/Desktop as soon as possible after shoot. The camera memory cards can also be destroyed or malfunctioned. Moreover, if you do not clear your camera memory cards regularly, you might face a huge challenge when next time you go out for a shoot and experienced all you memory cards are full. Then you can neither delete a file or can capture the new frames. Don’t be overconfident that you have a BIG memory card, I have three cards (32 GB-1 & & 8GB-2) but I experienced this poor situation of “Memory Card Full”. YeaaK.

MAKE A DIGITAL NEGATIVE

In this digital photography world, many of us forget about the “Negatives” which was a most popular term in Film Photography world. I create Negative for every single shoot. After transferring, the digital files in to Hard Drive, I instantly Burn a DVD with the Full Content and this is my “Digital Negative” which I preserve for rest of my life. I usually never touch the Digital Negative unless it is required. The DVD surfaces are very sensitive to scratches, fingerprint and dust. Therefore, it is safe to keep the DVD (Digital Negative) in your secure drawer.

Don’t forget to write the Level of you DVD with a DVD Marker and also buy DVD with boxes.

STORE SELECTIVE PHOTOS IN PORTABLE HARD DRIVE

When my Digital Negative is completed and checked okay, then I start sorting the photo’s in Laptop/Desktop Hard Drive. Delete all the crappy photos and retain only the photos I like very much and suitable for my Album. Do my post processing/retouching with the selected photos. Then I transfer the sorted and retouched photos to Portable Hard Drive. Currently, I have three Portable Hard Drive (650GB, 500GB and 250 GB). These files gives me super fast excess, when I want to enjoy this photographs in my Laptop or connected with my LED & LCD TV with my friends & family.

There are several reason that I preserve my selective photos in Portable Hard Drive rather than DVD -

• Easy USB Connection to display devices
• Faster file excess
• No risk of Scratches, Finger print and dust
• Do not need any DVD Players/Play stations
• Hard Drives are less expensive than DVD. Don’t you believe this? Okay, I will post another article on this discussion shortly, keep connected with my blog.

If any time my Hard Disk crashes, I don’t have to worry too much for the Photographs, I have my Digital Negatives in DVD.

PRESERVE IN  HARD COPIES : MAKE PHOTOBOOK/ALBUM

I never prints in small like 3R (3.5″x5″), 4R (6″x4″), 5R (5″x7″) and so on. This small prints are real carp and gives money to the Printing House owner and let you leave under huge pain of pasting this Photographs in Low quality pasting albums (one of biggest time consuming task I found).

I was against to do any printing but recently I realize the beauty of prints when it is perfectly designed in Good Albums. Prints in Album can gives you Touch & Feel of the photographs and also albums are good for Photo storage for lifetime.

Recently, I am trying some good Photobook Makers around the world. If you have International Credit card, then its super easy to order the books at your home. When I found any good (in terms of quality, price & delivery), I will share my experience with you.

ONLINE GALLERY/FACEBOOK ALBUM

I also upload photos to online. There are some paid servers where you can put your images but I usually just keep low res photos in Facebook. If my DVD, Portable Hard Disk and Album is lost or happen something terrible to them, then I can at least recover my memories from Facebook. However, due to some personal reason I don’t relay on Facebook Photo Album too much. Facebook Photo Album is like “Just in Case” to me. Still Facebook Album is a good option at Free of Cost.

I hope this article will help you to preserve & protect your Digital Photos at Home with minimum risk of lost files. However, any sort of natural disasters (fire, floor etc.) and accidental damage is not considered in this workflow.